Fifteen-year-old girls produce children with sixteen-year-old boys in the backseat of cars and in the stairwells of apartment buildings. Why can't two loving adults who have contemplated parenthood and are prepared to offer love, patience, and devotion come up with enough chromosomal matter to stick together and create a child?

They will grow up knowing that they should be only proud about being adopted. I will consider it a parental failure if our daughters ever try to use it as some kind of excuse.

Despite the reams of paperwork, obstacles worthy of a horse show, and a wait that can rival an elephant's gestation, adoption feels no different on the inside.

Race, blood, lineage, and nationality don't matter; they're just the way that small minds keep score. All that matters about blood is that it's warm and that it beats through a loving heart.

There are times when the adoption process is exhausting and painful and makes you want to scream. But, I am told, so does childbirth.

So: this is where we are going to become parents. You walk into the building as a couple, and leave a few minutes later as a family. You walk in recollecting long romantic dinners, nights at the theater, and care-free vacations. You leave worrying about where to get diapers, milk, and Cheerios.

It's not the cost (although that pinches), or the time (though that grinds). After a while, it's the sheer galling indignity of being asked to prove, pay, and prove all over again that you're a worthy parent. Any true parent will tell you that that is impossible to prove in advance.

And I don't even have to include Joseph adoption Jesus to make that point, though it is irresistible to add that Joseph and Mary had to go through a lot fewer interviews than my wife and I did. Well, maybe one major one.

Adoption is rewarding. But the process, as we have already detailed in some particulars, can be expensive, exhausting, and hard to sustain on a dream, much less a whim.