Adoption Poem

Last night I was doing searches for a poem or quote that would express our feelings about raising children and adoption and serve to introduce our lifebook. I think it's very usual to start with "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6". That was what the sample lifebook at the agency started with. Since we're not a Christian family I wanted something that was meaningful but secular.

I wasn't really a fan of Khalil Gibran's poetry. But I stopped searching the second I found this poem. I'm not going to quote the entire poem, just the part I'm going to put at the beginning of our lifebook, but you can find the more complete version in a link at the bottom.

"On Children"

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

http://www.columbia.edu/~gm84/gibran4.html