This week’s Beyond the Labels guest post comes from Brianna Brown, a spiritual director, missionary, and adoptive mom whose journey into motherhood has been marked by deep love, unimaginable pain, and the kind of surrender most of us hope we’ll never be asked to live through.
In this essay, Brianna shares her story with unflinching honesty and compassion—not to offer easy answers, but to invite us to look closer.
Brianna Brown provides safe, calming, companionship to vulnerable hearts—guiding them towards spiritual growth. She lives a simple life following Jesus amidst the pain and joy that floods our world. You will normally find her on any given day living real, messy life on their farm in northeast Georgia. She serves with her family as missionaries to displaced diaspora being resettled in their area.
You can connect with her at www.briannambrown.com or on substack! She also has a book, Soar: Noticing God While Discerning the Unfathomable.
I don’t remember the family’s name or the context of their story. I honestly can’t even remember if my husband and I had flown to the other side of the world and met our oldest son yet. All I remember was seeing an article about an adoptive family being ridiculed for a choice they’d made—a choice I imagine they hadn’t expected to make when they began their journey as a family. The words hurled at them by strangers behind screens were cruel. I can imagine the shame and accusations thrown their way shattering the fragile pieces of their life even further.
To be honest, at the time, I didn’t even read much of their story—because I was prideful and ignorant. I was naive to the repercussions that trauma can reverberate throughout a home. I was so confident in my human ability and would say—“That would never happen to my family.”
But could it?
Surely not.
Our journeys as mothers often take us to places we never imagined—both in joyous celebrations and gut-wrenching sorrows. The steps I’ve taken as a mother over the past eleven years have been no different. I’ve opened my soul to children who’ve grown close to my own heartbeat, and poured my heart out for another child—who grew next to another mother’s heart.
As the years unfolded and trauma reared its head again and again, my husband and I were brought to a place we never thought possible. I researched and advocated until my soul was raw in every meeting and appointment. I loved deeply—with every fiber of my being. I became a shell of who I was. I cried every tear I could. I found solace in my community—other moms who had walked similar journeys, and those who just sat in reverent silence for the pain in our home. I prayed my prayers in the form of rejoicing at milestones, crying in the stillness of the night, and screaming when the trauma was too much.
What do we do when the dreams we had for our families crumble?
Where is God when our children writhe in pain and our human efforts fall short?
What do we do when the world we identified with must look different than we imagined?
Little did I know when I became a mom that many years later, I would sit across the table from a family I’d just met—a family we had chosen to care for our own son long-term. My pride and naivety were gone. I was the most raw I’ve ever been. I was truly surrendering a child I loved with every ounce of my soul over to God—hoping that He was writing a story more grand than I could ever imagine. I would never again be the same adoptive mom I was before.
How could an adoptive mom give her child up?
How could I do this to my whole family?
Had God abandoned us in a calling He’d given us?
Would He redeem this situation?
Will we destroy our family by doing this?
Every question that hid in the closet, too scared to come out—was asked. There are no simple answers to the complex and deeply emotional questions we hold. There’s no “quick fix” to the pain we navigate in motherhood.
But here is what I do know—when God calls us into motherhood, He doesn’t set us up for failure. He doesn’t set us up to drown in shame. He invites us to daily receive His love, letting it be breath to our lungs—because He is enough. He has called us to love Him so deeply that we can’t help but love others and bring them along in our journey with Him.
We are invited by our Heavenly Father to release our white-knuckled grip on the labels and ideas we once clung to. We are safe to exhale and be called a beloved child of God. That will always be enough.
Let me boldly say this—my adoption didn’t fail, it just carries a different story.
What happens to families like mine is real, and sadly, it happens more often than we realize.
You may even know a family right now—with biological or adoptive children—walking through similar pain. I want to gently invite you to take on a new lens for families who must choose a different path—because honestly, it’s one they never imagined they’d have to walk.
I invite us to see them through the eyes of Jesus, not the labels they’ve been given.
Lay down your misconceptions, judgement, and opinions. Instead, love them by listening when they voice the scariest words they’ve ever had to say out loud. Let them cry. Let them ask questions.
Walk with them when they walk through the very few options left on the table. Be there as they them scream at God. And when they sit in the silence of the unknown. But don’t leave them alone in the valley.
Offer the same love Jesus offers you to families struggling through these moments. Allow them to experience his love through you:
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (NIV) John 13:34
May we be reminded today that we never know the journey God will take us on, or how He will use our stories. We are deeply loved—no matter what we have journeyed. We can hold kindness for others as we take on a new lens, admitting we never have the full story. We can rest in the sureness of whose we are, no matter how our circumstances change.
Above all else—we are always held in His love.
Thank you Brianna for this reflection. This is the hope of Beyond the Labels—to tell stories that help us lay down our assumptions and pick up empathy.
If this essay resonated with you, I’d love if you shared it with someone who might need to read it. And if you or someone you know is navigating a hidden or heavy part of motherhood, I hope this reminds you: you’re not alone.
You are seen. You are loved. And you don’t have to carry it by yourself.
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