I'm sure there is a moral or ethical dilemma for many people on this issue, I just don't happen to be one of those people.
For me, if God didn't want this couple to have a child they wouldn't be holding their child. I also believe that a child, out there in the ethers, gets to pick its parents. Like, it's a two-way street: the parents feel the want and need of a child and the child wants and needs those particular parents.
Some of you may have heard stories of little children - around ages two or three years old - say some profound thing that they shouldn't know or understand about being born or about life. I remember when I was in high school my father, a dentist, told us that he had had a three year old girl in for her first appointment. The mother, he said, seemed more anxious about the procedure than the little girl. The little girl, my father told us, looked at her mother and said something like, "Momma, don't worry, everything will be fine," and then added, "when I was with God, before I came to you, I chose you out of all the mommas." My dad said the little girl's mother just looked at him strangely like, where in the world did that come from? My dad, who was a believer in the spiritual realm (though he would most likely think of it as knowing there are unknowns) was struck by the child's words but not dumbfounded by them. He believed what she said was probably more truth than not.
In my own experience, I once had a colleague who had an appointment to show real estate to a client. Something unexpected came up and my colleague asked me if I would show the properties. The client, a young woman, wanted to follow me in her car to the mapped out locations... most likely because she had her three year old daughter with her. I told her I would meet them at the first house and they could follow me to the others.
So I got to the house, opened it up, and shortly after the woman came toward me with her adorable little girl. The little girl saw me, ran to me, wrapped her arms around my legs, looked up at me and stated excitedly, "Mommy!" Her mother and I looked at each other and just laughed. But what ended up happening was that every time they followed me to the next property the minute the little girl was out of the car she would run to me and call me, "Mommy." Finally, after about six times of this happening I asked her mother if she ever called someone besides her - like grandmothers or aunts - Mommy? The young mother was dumbfounded and said she never heard her little girl call anybody but herself "mommy." She didn't know "what has got into her."
But outside of the pure strangeness of this child I had never seen in my life calling me mommy from the first instant she met me, was that I could not have been more physically different than her mom. I'm 6' tall, her mother was closer to 5'. I'm pretty skinny, her mom was generously full-figured. I was 50, her mother was just over 25. And lastly, I'm white and both her parents were black.
When I thought about it later, after I had said my goodbyes and was driving home, I kept remembering all those stories I had heard over the years of little children being especially close to the spirit realm. And though I could have put no stock in what was happening between the darling little black girl and myself, I kinda just thought like my dad did: knowing there are unknowns.
The only thing I know is that it would be difficult for me to judge this old couple and their newborn daughter as being anything but God allowing each of them to have a gift.
