Poets and Saints
…and the moms who try to be both.Archive for Adoption
Change is Coming
If you haven’t been keeping up with our adoption journey, be sure to check out my other blog:
With the impending arrival of our 2nd baby, that is pretty much the only thing consuming my thoughts these days. It is hard to focus on anything else and I keep going back to my to-do list of all the things I want to get done before baby arrives. And I know that once the baby comes, I will be slow to get back into the routines of daily life. I am cleaning and cooking and washing with abandon, hoping that it will tide me over while I adjust to a new little one in our midst. I keep reminding myself that life does return to normal, eventually.
But I am staring sleepless nights and long days in the face. And you know what? I’m excited about them. Excited in that childlike way that does not know what the future holds or how tired I’ll be in a week. But I’m continually reminded by others, and myself, how special and fleeting those first days are with your baby. There will be a celebration of life and we hope to be part of that celebration.
I hope to be back to writing again soon…about the celebrations of life, about the fullness and excitement of simple things.
Announcing: A New Blog
My new blog is up! Adoption in Black and White
I will be adding a lot more to it in coming weeks, plus I’ll keep you updated on our adoption situation.
Enjoy!
Adoption Ideas
I get asked about adoption a lot, including my daughter’s adoption and our forthcoming one. I appreciate that people want to know about it, that they take the time to ask, and that they even remember we’re adopting again. Truth is if most pregnant women didn’t have a big belly sticking out in front of them I might totally forget they were having a baby. I’m such a visual person–I need it right in front of my face to remember it. With adoption there are no big bellies to remind people of the baby’s arrival. So I’m always impressed when people ask about it. It is a reminder of how thoughtful people are and how much I need to work on thoughtfulness myself.
Some people ask about adoption because they’re just being friendly, some ask because they want to know about any news (NO news yet!) and a few want to find out more about the adoption process because it interests them personally.
Secretly this last group is what I might call “potential” adoption parents; in other words, they’re interested, maybe even could see themselves doing it, but aren’t quite sure how to go about the process. I love meeting these people. Something is moving in their heart and mind. God is laying a vision for their family that is so darn exciting, but they are a little scared about it. And best of all, when they look around at other children, they imagine their own children. Their future children. I can tell. I see it in their eyes.
Most of the time, I don’t try to push these people at all, I just let the Holy Spirit do its work. Sometimes I’ve sent them to websites for adoption agencies, but for some people that’s too much information right at the start. They may not want to know that adoption is going to cost them 20 grand, or that they’ll fill out paperwork almost equivalent to the last 5 years of IRS taxes. Ugh. Those aren’t the nice parts of adoption. Those are the labor pains–the necessary evil to get to the good part: the child.
I know that the best way to tell people about adoption is face-to-face, but that is not always possible. Then an idea hit: an adoption blog would be a great way to get adoption information in the hands of potential parents/adoption supporters/those affected by or interested in adoption. I know, what the world needs is ANOTHER BLOG. On the other hand, I’m often surprised at just how many people are interested in hearing adoption stories. My hope is that it would be a combination of personal story (something would-be adoptive parents seems especially interested in) as well as links and good websites about adoption and adoption issues. I’m also hoping that it might be an encouragement, and resource for those interested in adoption. What’s great about the world wide web is that the blog’s influence can be much more far reaching than my own back door.
But that also means it would be a “niche” blog and leave out some people who have no interest in adoption. No offense, but I’m okay with that. Adoption is not for everyone and I don’t expect it to be. Although I don’t mind putting adoption updates on here, I know for a potential adoptive parent, there might be too many other stories to wade through. (New recipes anyone?) And I will still keep writing here as well.
So look for an annoucement about it in a few weeks if things go well around at home . (No colds, no emergencies, no tantrums, no vomiting…you know, the stuff that interrupts life.) There will be a link to it and hopefully many of you will recommend it to someone in your life who is interested in adoption. What would be even better is if I had some exciting news to share on it too! But I can’t promise that…things have been pretty quiet around here. Getting the blog up will be news enough.
Adoption Update
This weekend was a disappointment.
That’s actually an understatement.
It was heart-breaking.
We got a call from the adoption agency with the chance to adopt a newborn already born at the hospital. They didn’t have a lot of information and we had to decide very quickly. The combination of little info and a quick decision made it extremely hard to come to a solid conclusion. Of course we wanted to do it. We really wanted to. That was our first thought.
But as the information trickled in, it didn’t sit right with us. There were some red flags; some things that could impact us down the road. I won’t go into the details because it really isn’t important now, except to say that we couldn’t feel totally settled about it. If I had more time to accept some of the issues or if we could have gotten this information beforehand, who knows, maybe we could have done it. Maybe. But we didn’t have the luxury of time or information, which made it all the harder to feel good about the outcome.
I wish these kinds of decision weren’t so hard. I wish adoption would come together in a nice, tidy sort of way. But it usually doesn’t. I recently read that “even in the best circumstances adoption is a leap of faith.” It is messy. Anything but perfect. There is always something that makes you hestitate, that makes you ask, “Are you sure?”
The same was true with our first adoption. It wasn’t perfect either, but it was better than this weekend. We had 3 weeks to decide and we had a lot more information ahead of time. We had time to wrestle with it, grapple with it and then decide, “Yes, this is right.” Those things made a world of difference. It helped to unify our decision. It gave us time to accept the things that were difficult. It gave us time to have peace.
We were so confused this weekend; we finally decided to say no. Afterwards, I thought I would feel relieved, but instead, I just felt sad. Sad that I didn’t have more time, more information, more money, fewer questions and more answers. There was so much sadness that things just weren’t right.
One of the hardest things is that we had trouble really discerning what the Lord wanted us to do. There was no handwriting on the wall. No special wisdom or anything. The advice we got was even more conflicting. Some telling us to “Wait on the Lord;” others saying “Step out in faith.” Those are both good thoughts, even Biblical ones, but they were people saying opposite things. That seemed to be the nature of the whole situation.
Now people keep telling us that if we didn’t have peace, then it wasn’t meant to be. I agree with that to a point, but am not so sure that what I was feeling was a lack of peace or just a lack of faith. I even question whether I was really feeling fear and that I somehow interpreted it as not having peace. To be honest, I am not really sure. I just know that I am second guessing my own emotions and that is a hard place to be. This one decision is permanent. Lifelong. Choice is both a horrible and a beautiful thing.
The only thing that has brought us some reconciliation is the news that the baby was placed with another family. That is bringing us closure. We are slowly feeling better. But in our hearts, we are still sort of in mourning about the whole thing.
Now I am praying much more passionately about our adoption: about our future baby’s health, the birthmom, the situation, and that we’ll know–somehow–when the right opportunity comes around. I can’t explain it. But I hope God gives second chances.
Letter to my Unborn Child
Dear Baby,
It’s January 7th and you are not here yet. I was okay with you not coming before the holidays with all the parties and gift buying and merriment that clutters up our lives. But I am starting to have doubts. My rational side tells me you will come sometime. Just be patient. But there’s an irrational part of me that starts to wonder: Is it soon enough? Will I go completely bananas in the meantime?
We finished our homestudy in October after starting the process this summer. For the last year and a half I have been working odd jobs to pay for the adoption, including three jobs during 2008. I’m like Tevye’s daughter in Fiddler on the Roof who says she’ll dig ditches and haul rocks, anything to be with her true love. I’m glad there was no ditch-digging involved with my jobs, but I would say the same thing for you baby.
At first I was fine with it all not happening so fast, with enjoying the process like the slow growth of a pregnant woman’s belly. It’s our second adoption. I’m not supposed to be so eager now that I know how much work and sleep deprivation it takes those first few years. But secretly you must know: I can’t wait for you. Nothing deters my excitement, not the holding-you-until-my-arms-fall-off, not the poop-soaked onesies, not the amazing amounts of spit up that have already stained my carpet. It’s all part of the job.
In fact if you must know the truth, I enjoyed the infant stage so much more than I ever thought possible. The long hours of holding our first baby were consumed with feedings and books and odd TV shows at two AM. I read your big sister The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe during those first few months. I wanted her to know my voice. I want you to know it too.
So now that the waiting has begun, now that my phone sits silent and people keep asking if I know anything about our adoption, it is a bit quiet. In the meantime I am knitting an awful lot, but nothing for you yet as I do it rather badly. I dream of knitting little baby things. Cute little sweaters or baby booties. If you take too long, maybe I’ll have a whole drawer full of things for you including a stack of letters. You won’t be able to appreciate the letters for awhile but it’s an attempt to help stave off my need to hold you in my arms and sing you lullaby right now.
Big sister is hoping you come too. She is praying for it. One night she prayed that God would bring us two babies. Afterwards I told her I wasn’t so sure about two babies. Her reply?
“One for you and one for me.”
She has big hopes. Rides down the slide together. Tickling fights. Someone to chase through the house. She’ll be disappointed when she realizes that you can’t do any of those things. You’ll grow up in a heartbeat like she did, all legs and monkey arms expanding in great bursts of energy. I daresay she loves you already. We all do.
So come soon sweet baby. We are all waiting.
Conversations with Strangers
I have the weirdest conversations about adoption with strangers. Take two conversations I’ve had in the last week with people I do not know.
Conversation #1:
We are waiting outside a classroom for our children to complete their class. A mother turns to me and asks: “So is she yours?”
I really hate this question because whether a child is adopted or biological, they are still yours. I repress the urge to correct the lady and simply reply, ”Yes, she is mine.”
“No,” she asks, “I mean, did you have her?”
Aha. The real question. The question she should have asked from the beginning. Is she my biological daughter? I forget that people actually wonder this. It seems plain to me that with my fair complexion and my daughter’s African one, that we do not share the same genes. But at least the woman had the nerve to ask.
“No, my daughter is adopted,” I say.
“Oh,” she says a little embarrassed, “since I don’t know your husband, I didn’t know…”
…If he was black, I want to say. I don’t. She doesn’t either. There is an awkward pause.
“Where is she from?” She asks.
“She was born in Indianapolis,” I reply. I know what she is thinking. Complete strangers think my daughter is from either from Haiti or Ethiopia. I wish my brother-in-law was here to give his response: “She was born in the far-away country of…Indianapolis.” I am not quite so brave.
“Oh. I didn’t know if she was from Haiti or somewhere like that.”
I don’t say it, but it is there waiting to slip out: yeah, everyone thinks that.
Instead, I just smile.
Conversation #2
Takes place at the checkout counter at Lowe’s Home Improvement Store. The checkout lady is a middle aged African American lady who speaks quietly and quickly. My daughter is with me and the woman is checking out our merchandise when she asks, “Do you do foster care?”
I almost miss the question she asks it so fast.
“No, she’s adopted.”
“Oh, that’s a good thing too,” she replies. Then she goes on, “I thought about doing foster care because there’s so many children out there. You know, abused children who need a home.”
“I know. It’s sad,” I say. “And it’s not their fault.”
The checkout lady replies, “I know what they should do [to the parents]. They should sew them up.”
I’m not following where this woman is going. I just look at her. She realizes I don’t get it.
“They should sew up the parents and keep them from having kids,” she says with a smile.
This is one of those times when saying less is probably best. I can’t tell if this women is half joking or half serious.
So she goes on and starts to laugh, “We have this product in the back called ‘Black Jack Crack Filler.’ We should just put that on them and that would take care of the problem. When they’re in the courtrooms, after they’re done, we should just send them to the back with some doctors and nurses and they could use some Crack Filler on them so they can’t have any more kids.”
She is laughing about it now, not suggesting this as a real solution, but I sense there is a grain of truth somewhere in her tone.
Suddenly she becomes serious and says, “That would be better than all this looseness.”
At that point, we are done paying and ready to leave the store. I thank her and walk away, wondering how I got myself into that conversation. The problem is, I walked right into it when I adopted a little girl who doesn’t look like me. I chose a whole lot of questions about family, about race, about America’s problems when we became a multicultural family. Some of the conversations I have are uncomfortable; some are downright awkward. But many of the conversations open doors into a whole new world that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I don’t think an African American sales clerk would be talking about ‘crack filler’ and ‘ all this looseness’ with me if we didn’t have something in common, and that something is recognizing that the family unit is falling apart all over America and most of us don’t know what to do about it. Sometimes it’s easier just to make a joke to a stranger.
We were never promised that our conversations would be easy or that raising children wouldn’t open our eyes to the pain and suffering that is happening as families collapse. It’s recognizing that we need more than politics and ideas to bring us some solutions. It’s realizing that we might be part of the solution, if we’re willing to open ourselves up to difficult choices.
Gratitude
I’m crunching numbers again. I’ve worked three jobs this year for our adoption but we are still short of our goal to complete the adoption process. The number is a discouraging amount–too much money to try and just tighten the budget a little more. I will have to find more work or organize a fundraiser or even both. My mind tends to get stuck on these kind of details. That’s when I start to worry. But I’m trying something foreign to me: I try to let it go. Somehow I have to trust God to work it all out. I’m not sure how or when or where.
The next week at church a guy approaches Sam and me. I don’t know him, but Sam does and I soon find out we have something in common. We are both adoptive parents.
He says to us, “My wife and I aren’t going to adopt any more children, but we want to help those that are adopting, so we would like to send you some money this week.”
I am a little speechless. I don’t know what to say other than thank you (and somehow that never seems to be enough). Why would they want to give me money? How did they know?
On Tuesday, my daughter is outside playing. It is an exceptionally warm day for November, in the 70’s and we decide to take a walk to the mailbox. We live in one of those neighborhoods where the mailbox is down the street. My daughter likes riding her bike to the mailbox or just poking along the sidewalk tripping over uneven slabs of concrete. The mailbox trip becomes a family affair usually ending with a handful of sale flyers and throw away mail. But not today. My husband opens a white envelope from the guy at church. I look at it once. Then twice. The check is for the exact amount of our adoption shortfall.
“Oh my word, oh my word,” I say. My daughter is unfazed. We gather hands and say a prayer of thanks to God and then try to explain to our daughter what we just got in the mail. She doesn’t get it, but she knows God is bringing us a baby. She prays for it almost every night.
My husband calls up the man on the phone to thank him. He cries as he does it. The only other time I remember him crying on the phone was when he called his parents to tell them he was diagnosed with cancer. But this time, his tears are joy.
The next week I read our memory verse for family devotions. “Our Father knows what we need before we ask him.”
Thank you God for knowing our needs and meeting all of them.
