Jim Caviezel Shares the Fears and Joys of Adoption

Jim Caviezel, best known for his role as Jesus in The Passion of the Christ shared his story of adopting two children with serious medical conditions. He believed he was called by God to take these children, with all of their challenges.

Caviezel, 39, ...talked about overcoming fear to adopt two children suffering from brain tumors.

Caviezel and his wife, Kerri, adopted the children, a boy and a girl, from China. But the decision wasn't easy, the actor acknowledged.

"I was completely terrified and felt like, why; I felt like, 'Yes, I know you want me to take this child but I feel fear, great fear,'" Caviezel said. "But if I looked in my soul, which I was used to, at that point, I knew that God wanted me to do it. So I felt all the emotions of the negativity, of the burden it was going to … what it was going to do to me."...

"So my wife and I believe strongly in life, that all men are created equal. So it was time to put my money where my mouth was," Caviezel recalled.

A friend challenged him to prove the authenticity of his faith by adopting "not just any child, but a really disabled child."

Caviezel challenged back: "And I said, 'OK, so when I do, will you become pro-life?' So I adopted this child and I called him up.

"He didn't make good on his word, but it didn't matter to me because the joy that we had, have from this child -- he's like our own. I was there with him through the surgery with my wife and we did not know if he was going to live."

Caviezel explained a little of his son's history: "This little boy had nothing. He was left on a train. And he grew up in an orphanage. […] He lived there for five years in an orphanage. They were told that they came from the ground, that they had no mommy. That they didn't come from a stomach, but that they were born from the dirt."

Harder road

Adopting the little girl was another opportunity for Caviezel to act on his faith, he said: "We actually asked God for a girl and we got a newborn girl, […] but the following day, we got another girl -- she was a 5-year-old.

"And she had a brain tumor. We knew that girl would never get adopted and the little baby would. So we took the harder road. And we have chosen that. […] That's what faith is to me. It's action. It's Samaritan. It's not the one who says he is. It's the one who does."

I salute Caviezel and his wife for this decision. But I am concerned: The fact that both these kids were in orphanages for five years is a bright red flag for attachment disorder. I wrote about attachment disorder in Love and Economics. I pray that these children attach to Caviezel and his wife. Attachment disorder can be more difficult, and long lasting than medical conditions.
Let's pray for this family.