Somebody Else’s Kids. That was the title of the message at church this week. It was a good message by the CEO of World Vision calling the church to follow the Biblical call to care for “the least of these” and the “stranger” and “foreigner living among you.” The primary focus of the message was about the Syrian refugee crisis and the need for the church to step in and help. Half of the 12 million Syrian refugees are kids. Kids who are loved by their family and loved by God. Kids who have seen war and death and need a hope for the future. My heart breaks for what breaks God’s heart.

The title struck me in a different way, though. Somebody else’s kids. I looked down at the almost 10-year-old Super Tall Guy, sitting on the floor of the church creating a military battle scene on the back of the message card. He’s huge. He’s almost up to my nose in height. He’s wearing size 10 men’s shoes. He can lift me off my feet. He looks absolutely nothing like me. He’s Somebody Else’s Kid. Or, he was. He was born somebody else’s kid, but he’s my kid now. He never lived with anybody else. He spent two days in the hospital, but other than that, and a day here and there, he’s always been with me. He’s my boy. My son.

But it was a long process. For a while, Super Tall Guy and his brothers each were somebody else’s kids and the “somebody” was the state of Pennsylvania. I loved them and kissed them and rocked them to sleep every night, but I couldn’t make any major decisions about their care, including whether they needed a haircut. It took a court visit, an “I do,” and a signed piece of paper to remove the “somebody else” and make them my “kids.”

Yet I know that they started out as somebody else’s kids. They know it too. We don’t mention it frequently but it does come up every once in awhile.

The Little Guy will be five in a few weeks. At the dining room table the other day, he looked up at me and said, “I want to see my birth mom.” I don’t remember him ever using the word birth mom before. I don’t know why he was thinking about her or what sparked any thought about other moms. Maybe he was thinking about somebody else’s kids. Maybe he was thinking about adoption. Maybe he wasn’t really thinking about anything. Maybe he was just being five. But it’s something all of these kids are going to think about at some point and probably over and over again as they contemplate their journey and their place in the world.

And I’ll be right there alongside them as they go, figuring it out myself as we work on it together, grateful for Somebody Else’s Kids.