We Can’t All Be Brown

During the last few years we have added to our two blond, blue-eyed children six others. Three have come from Costa Rica. Two others are Indian Placement children, and the last is a baby we adopted in Mexico. We have worked hard trying to help our adopted and foster children love the beautiful brown skin the Lord gave them.

One night in the bathtub, Trenton, age four, asked if I could wash him white. I was sure all my efforts had been in vain until a short time later.

It was one of my low days. I was sitting in the front room looking out the window at the kittens playing on the lawn, and crying. Trenton climbed onto the chair and looked closely into my face. He asked, “Mom, are you mad at me?”

“No,” I answered.

“Are you mad at Elisha?”

I shook my head.

“Then who are you mad at?”

I told him I just didn’t like myself very much today.

He looked at me with his big brown eyes and said, “But you have to love you. Jesus made you that way. He couldn’t make everyone brown. White is nice, too!”

I learned a wonderful lesson from my son that day. God loves each of us the way we are, and he has hopes and dreams for us, just as we do for ourselves. After all, he couldn’t make everyone brown.—Ronnell Jones, Monroe, Utah