Adoption is something very close to my heart. Adoption is something both within my heart and within our home. Adoption went from something of a mystery, an unknown, a way in which to simply become “family,” to something up close and very personal.
We doctored for infertility for years. We emptied our bank accounts on doctors and medicines and procedures. We wept, we struggled, we hoped, we prayed, we waited month after month after month. We never achieved a pregnancy, I don’t think I ever even experienced a late period in which to even begin to possibly even have hope over.
We grieved, we mourned, we cried, we fought with ourselves, we fought with each other, and then one day… one day, we were done. We were done with appointments, and procedures, and recording, and charting, and failing over and over and over again.
We filled out paperwork, gathered references, got fingerprinted, took the required classes, logged the required hours. We created a profile book, we discussed what we would and wouldn’t be ok with when it came to decisions on race, sex, substance exposure, state boundaries, and many many more variables and possibilities that families who can conceive naturally never ever have to consider.
Several months later, we officially became “paper pregnant,” an official "family in waiting."
It would take two more years for us to be chosen. There had been so many possibles, maybes, hopefully’s, should have beens, might have beens, could have beens. But every time it was something… something that didn’t work out or didn’t come to be. Our hopes began to dim, our hearts began to harden.
We almost quit. We almost gave up. We almost walked away from the hope, from the wait all together. But we didn’t, we somehow hung on just a little longer… just a little longer.
I remember during those years and months thinking that adoption was not for the faint at heart. And that, my friends, was before we were even chosen or placed with a child. I thought the wait was hard… oh I just shake my head and laugh at my clueless, naive little self back then. I obviously had no idea what was in store for me in the years to come.
Don’t get me wrong, the wait was hard, I’m not discounting that part of the journey at all. I just never took the time to look, process, prepare for “after” the wait, for “after” the placement. The adoption process does not end at placement, and that was something I hadn’t fully thought about, until we were in the car driving home, a tiny newborn crying in our backseat, a distraught birth mom left crying at the hospital, and an adoptive mom who was so overtaken by unexpected emotion I wasn’t sure what to think or do.
Adoption is absolutely not for the faint at heart. Adoption is hard, and unbelievably good, and indescribably messy, and utterly exhausting ~ mentally, physically, and spiritually. I honestly can’t really put words to the full realm of the full reality of adoption. So many emotions, so many highs and lows, so many goods and bads, so many predicables, so many unpredictables.
I have never once questioned or doubted the reality that God has called my husband and I to this, and that God hand picked our son to be the child placed in our family, in our home, in our hearts. I however would be lying if I didn’t also admit that there have been days that I desperately wish we hadn’t been called to this. I realize this is something that I’m probably not supposed to ever be sharing, voicing, admitting to.
We waited, we wished, we prayed, we hoped, we paid for all of this. We chose this, and the world watched as we accepted this calling and this child. They cried, hugged, rooted for us, genuinely rejoiced with us… but I soon began to realize that not everyone “got” it. Not everyone has fully understood the magnitude of it all from an outsiders perspective. And because of that, I have carried a lot of guilt and frustration. So often I have felt misunderstood and completely not seen. I have often felt like I’ve been crawling along in the dirt and grime of the underbelly of hard and unknown and unseen, and yet knowing it was something we “chose” to do, something we “paid” to do, it was also something I could not, should not, took a vow I would not complain about, or really even talk about outside the safe circle of those few others also on the inside that “got it.”
Not all the smiles were (or are) sugar coated and forced, there was (and is) times of great joy and exhilaration. But that is the fine line where things just get a little tricky. No, not a little tricky, a lot tricky. Every day is a roller coaster and some days it’s one heck of a wild ride. Some days we’re busy taking selfies and trying to soak in all the fun and the memories. Some days I just desperately want to get off the ride and never ever return. Ever.
There are so many things I would love to say, and share, and express, and talk about on the topic of adoption. For several years when our son was very little I did actually share quite a bit on a little blog I wrote. It was a blog that I have set to private, I controlled who could view it and enter into the sacredness of that space. At that time not many wanted to share that space with me, and I was very protective with those who did. In time I slowly just stopped sharing. It was hard, the words seemed sharp and harsh, and I was again reminded just how many just didn’t fully “get it” couldn’t fully grasp the “full reality” of our life and our situation.
We were tired, so so tired. For the first six years, sleep was a long ago distant thing of the past, long days that bleed into long days, and made for a really long and hard season. That season would continue on as baby grew into toddler, who became a pre-schooler, then an elementary schooler… and now we are looking middle school dead on in the eyes already for next year.
I would be lying if I told you this didn’t scare the holy crap out of me. Am I excited to watch him continue to grow and try and accomplish new things, yes absolutely! But along with all of that also comes the homework, the academic and social expectations, the inner and outer battles that grow larger and stronger the larger and stronger he grows.
A few years ago our family went through another tough and tragic season with the pregnancy and loss of our daughter, who we unexpectedly found out I was carrying at the age of forty. We never got the joy to take her home. She went from the hospital to the cemetery, and our worlds were rocked forever. Our already hurting and struggling family did not know how to function, how to cope, how to survive.
But we didn’t have a choice, we just kept taking one day at a time, one foot in front of the other, over and over and over again, like we’d been doing already for so many years. The sun went up and the sun went down, and the days turned into weeks, and months, and years, and our daily roller coaster of attachment issues, grief and loss issues, anger issues, and the alphabet soup of other diagnoses just keep intersecting with our crazy roller coaster of stillborn grief and loss… and there are days I seriously don’t quite know how I am simply going to make it to the time when I get to take a sleeping pill, climb into bed, and just sleep, in an attempt to simply ignore and forget the burdens and reality at hand for just a few brief and silent hours.
Yes, November is National Adoption Awareness month. There are a million amazing wonderful things I could say and share and express, and there's a million hard and difficult things I could also say, and share, and express. But ultimately, this is not just my story to tell. This is a delicate and intricate story of a birth mom, birth father, adoptive mom, adoptive father, and the special child chosen to go from one to the other. It’s all of our stories, all of our experiences, all of our realities tied together separately and yet as one. It’s a colorful and complicated, and ultimately not just my story to tell. So, I will leave this post at this and simply ask for your grace, your forgiveness, your understanding, your prayers, your willingness to see us, see me, see our son, see our situation for the reality in which it really is, not the reality in which you may think it is.
The reality of adoption is something on a grand scale far far beyond the wildest imagination of most, which can cause both a gap, a hole, a divide deeper and darker than you can describe, while at the same time also can cause a connection, a coming together, an immediate bond with both the stranger and the friend both near and far.
Adoption is filled with hurt and filled with joy. Adoption is laced with drama and frustration and blanketed in hope and grace. Adoption is beautiful beyond words and adoption is ugly beyond imagination. I wish there was a nicer, easier, prettier way to express and share this. But there isn’t, at least for me there isn’t.
If you’re reading this and even a tiny piece of your heart and soul gets it, relates, knows, connects… please know you are not alone. You are not out there struggling along alone. Send me a note, reach out and connect with me - I would love to hear your story and give you a hug.
If you’re reading this and shaking your head wondering why I would write any of this, share any of these words that are remotely negative, and hard, and casting a dark light upon our situation, our child, our lives, then I am sorry. I simply ask you to try to stop and recognize the possible hardness harbored within, the blinders that might be covering your eyes, the inconsideration that might be clouding your thoughts. Please just try open your heart… just a little, open your mind… just a little, open your eyes… just a little. All I’m asking is to simply try see, and accept, our reality as that which is probably different than yours.
I’m doing the best I can, and I know most days that it’s not good enough (for you, for me, for my family, for anyone) but it’s all I’ve got to offer. I would simply love someone to at least attempt to see, understood, recognize the effort and perseverance through the days and times when things aren’t what they should be, aren’t what I want them to be, aren’t what I need them to be. It’s hard enough when the battles ensue within the walls of our family and of our home, but then to add the battle of the world outside us that seems to be always warring against us, and it can make everything just that much harder. Those are the days when the weight of the world seems to be on my shoulder and the force of the world seems to be against me.
Honestly, I just try every day to merely help find their find success. I want my son to find success in the realm of that which he is able to achieve. I want the teachers to find success teaching him, I want his friends and family to see and accept the true person he is inside. Some days that’s his happy and true self, and some days that is his grumpy and unhappy self. He is equally both, and needs to be equally loved in both. Some days it’s easy and some days it’s not, we honestly never know until the moment arrives. I can plan and prep and attempt to stay a step or two ahead at all times and in all ways, but even that is never enough.
While I never know what to expect or what is going to be coming our way, I do know that I was chosen for this and I’m in this for the long haul. I’m on the roller coaster for the entire ride. I’m going to stand by and try to continue to stand strong through the good and the bad, the easy and the hard.
November is National Adoption Awareness month, and it is my prayer that I can somehow be a small puzzle piece that opens the window of awareness between the worlds and perceptions that are sometimes missed and misunderstood. Though my eyes and heart, I pray the world might be able to see just a glimmer of the joy, yet also know the brevity of the hurt and the hard when it comes to all things adoption related.
The good, the bad, the ugly. It’s all there, it’s all a part of it. Hand in hand, side by side, it’s all what makes it the grand journey that it is.
