Julie Lowe, a longtime counselor with the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation (CCEF), is drawing renewed attention to the hidden cost of difficult adoptions in Christian homes as she speaks publicly about the crises her own family has weathered.
Lowe holds a master’s degree in counseling from Biblical Theological Seminary, is a licensed professional counselor, and serves as a registered play therapist supervisor, combining clinical training with a distinctly Christian framework for care. Over more than two decades at CCEF, she has counseled children and families, taught on issues such as child maltreatment and sexual abuse, and developed a play therapy office designed to help young people process trauma. In addition to her counseling work, Lowe has authored resources including Child Proof: Parenting by Faith, Not Formula and Building Bridges, which urge parents to move away from rigid formulas and toward knowing and loving the particular child God has placed in their home.
Lowe’s credibility on adoption comes not only from the counseling room but from her own household, where she and her husband Greg have served as foster and adoptive parents for more than twenty years. In a CCEF podcast, she explains that she began fostering before the couple married, welcoming two young girls who later walked down the aisle as flower girls before being adopted into the family. The Lowes have since added multiple children through foster care and adoption, eventually parenting six children and continuing to open their home to others. Across interviews and podcasts, Lowe describes the emotional and behavioral struggles that can accompany these placements, urging churches to recognize that “hard adoptions” are not a sign of failure but a predictable outcome when children arrive with deep histories of loss, neglect, or abuse.
The experiences Lowe describes sit within a wider landscape in which disrupted adoptions, while a minority of cases, represent a persistent concern for social workers and ministries. A major study commissioned by the UK government, Beyond the Adoption Order, calculated that about 3.2 percent of adoptions in England disrupted over a twelve-year period, with nearly two-thirds of those disruptions occurring during the teenage years. The report found that gender and ethnicity were not significant risk factors, but that adolescent placements carried higher instability as unresolved trauma emerged alongside normal developmental pressures. In the United States, a Newsweek analysis of federal data noted that adoption disruptions are difficult to track but estimated that 10 to 25 percent of adoptions encounter serious breakdowns, particularly where children have complex mental-health needs. Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO) has highlighted how a small but troubling number of families resort to “rehoming” children through informal online networks, citing Reuters’ identification of 183 such cases—about 0.08 percent of international adoptions over five years—as evidence of the pressures some parents face when formal support systems fail.
Alongside Lowe’s story, Christian organizations are increasingly working to build those support systems before families reach a breaking point. CAFO has developed training and peer networks for adoptive and foster parents, emphasizing trauma-informed care, realistic expectations, and the importance of community over isolation. The coalition’s resources encourage churches to move beyond celebrating adoption day to sustained involvement through respite care, mentoring, and advocacy with schools and mental-health providers. A report from CBN News likewise points to congregations that now host support groups, partner with professional counselors, and offer financial assistance for therapy as they seek to respond to adoptees’ mental-health needs and the strain on parents. These initiatives reflect a shift from viewing adoption solely as a one-time act of rescue toward understanding it as a long-term commitment that may include police involvement, psychiatric hospitalization, and intense family conflict.
Lowe’s ongoing work mirrors that shift. In interviews and teaching, she urges churches to prepare families more honestly for the possibility of severe behavioral issues, while also reassuring weary parents that asking for help does not mean they have failed. Her counseling and mandated reporter trainings challenge congregations to take seriously both the vulnerabilities of adopted children and the risk that overwhelmed caregivers may themselves become unsafe without adequate support. As she continues to write, speak, and consult with churches and schools around the country, Lowe’s story is helping frame “hard adoptions” not as aberrations, but as situations in which Christian communities can embody patient, informed care for both parents and children.