One interesting aspect of adoption is the ability to choose. Having a biological kid, well, you kinda just get what you get. You have sex, the fastest sperm and the egg for that month collide, and you've got a baby in the making. (Yeah, yeah I know – I'm oversimplifying the process.) What comes out roughly 9-months later is anyone's guess. We can pretty much bet it will be human, of course, and a conglomeration of Mom and Dad's genes. But what exactly those ingredients create really can't be known until that bun comes out of the oven.

Will it be a boy or a girl? Will it have hair or no hair? Straight hair or curly? Will it have all 10 fingers and toes? Will your wee one be healthy? Free of birth defects? How about personality? Intelligence? Will your child grow up to be tall like dad or short like mom? There are a lot of variables, even within a known gene pool, and you don't get to pick and choose the traits that you hope your little one will have.

With adoption you have a little more opportunity to choose. Do I want a boy or girl? Do I want my child to be the same race as me or am I open to (or even prefer) another race? Do I want to adopt from this country or another country? What age do I want to adopt? Do I want to adopt one child or siblings?

If the child is older there's even more choice involved, mainly because more is known. Do I want my child to be a toddler, school-aged, preteen or teenager? Do I want a child that's already been raised in my same religion? How about personality – do I want an outgoing child or a reserved one? One that's funny, brainy, gentle, or spunky? How about interests? Do I want a child that loves animals, likes camping, swimming, video games, or reading?

Oooh, this is fun, isn't it? I get to pick and choose my family! Hmmm, not so fast…

Here's the thing – admittedly it's kinda cool to have some choice in the matter. Or so it seems at first glance. But as Bill and I got farther into it we quickly discovered that all this choosing isn't so fun. Quite frankly it's equally a blessing and a curse, especially when it comes to special needs.

At one point we were actually given a checklist of a whole host of potential problems. We were asked to go down that list and check the things we were willing to take on as an adoptive parent. Everything from asthma to Down Syndrome… you name it, it was on the list. And you know what? For every box we left unchecked we felt like complete jerks.

Are we horrible people if we say we don't want to parent a child with autism? Or a child in a wheelchair? How about a child with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome? Is ADHD something we're willing to take on? What about blindness, deafness, seizure disorders, cleft palate, aggressive behaviors, depression, anxiety, self-injuring, Down Syndrome, etc, etc, etc??

How in the world can you pick and choose these things? I mean, on the one hand it's a little bit of a relief to know that if I don't want a kid with11 toes I don't have to worry about that. (Obviously I wouldn't care if my kid had 11 toes; I purposely chose a benign example.) But you know what? Who am I to choose that? If I had a biological kid born with 11 toes obviously I would love that child unconditionally. I would rise to any challenges that came our way. And because I would love a bio kid unconditionally shouldn't I love any adopted kid unconditionally???

So faced with a checklist like that, what would you do? Would you check everything? Seriously, ask yourself that. If you could pick and choose, what would your checklist look like?

Let's think of it in terms of biological kids for a minute. If it were possible to have a similar checklist before your child was born would you honestly check everything? No, you wouldn't. You wouldn't even check the box for 11 toes. If, for some reason, the kitchen got your order wrong and your bun came out of the oven with 11 toes, you'd rise to the challenge. But you didn't choose it, and you would never choose it if you had the choice.

Picking and choosing children isn't like picking out new pillows for the couch or a new paint color for the bathroom. These are people. And yet as part of the process our agency required that we fill out the checklist. Why? Because honestly, each of us has our limitations. There are some things we could deal with like champs and some things that would push us to the brink. If we take on a child with a special need that we know will push us to the brink, are we doing that child any good? Because you know what? It all comes back to the kids. It's not really about what I do or don't want in a child. It's about my ability to parent that child and give them the best life possible. If I say I'm okay with a kid with 11 toes when I know deep down that 11 toes is going beyond my capabilities, then the person I'm really hurting is the child.

So with guilt washing over us, we went through each item on the checklist. We had a lot of discussions; we did a lot of soul-searching. And we checked our boxes. We felt good about the ones we checked, and felt like jerks about the ones we didn't. But all the while we reminded ourselves that we are human, and we can only do so much. As much as it hurt, we had to be brutally honest with ourselves for the sake of our future children.

We are choosing adoption. We are choosing special needs. Though many boxes were left unchecked, many others were. Picking and choosing is hard, but I have to remind myself that the fact that we are choosing at all means that a child without a home will soon have a forever family. There should be no guilt in that.

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do. – Edmund Everett Hale