On second thought, an overdue post!
(CAUTION: direct, honest, perhaps scattered, and my first hand experiences of how BIG God truly is!)
Reflection is a beautiful opportunity and as I reflect on this journey called life I am AMAZED at the details and the preparation of my own thoughts, needs, desires and how I believe God has prepared me for our children.
I am was a planner, a preparer, a plan A, B and heck plan C kind of girl. I still plan ahead and prepare, but not like I use to, you see it was just a false sense of security I carried around that misled me into believing I had all kinds of control of my life. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe I have a lot, but not to the degree I once perceived and in the end brought great sorrow when plan C failed.
I had my life planned out, including graduating from college, grad school, marriage, start a family, and just how that would all look…. Well I graduated, no male interest or should I say, no male had an interest in me. Time past, in fact years past and I was a great female friend to many males, all platonic of course. I desperately wanted a baby and the time line I had for marriage and the birth of my first child had come and gone. I began to ponder in my usual way of processing and one of question that I revisited several times was what is the absolute worst thing that could happen to me if I do not physically carry and give birth to a child? The answer, I would not have what I wanted or desired and I would be sad, but it would not define me or change me. So I grieved the idea of never giving birth and eventually experienced peace with letting go of the angst I felt by not meeting my biological loudly clicking clock.
Moving on in time, and VERY single, I met Ben. He approached me at the 11th hour at a wedding. The initial light conversation began, what do you do for work? I explained I had just started working with juvenile delinquents, but had been working with families in therapeutic foster care and adoption. Light conversation quickly turned into a passionate conversation about our shared passion for the oppressed and the orphan crisis and both of our desires to adopt. The conversation did not end that night…….. We got married and planned to wait a year before starting a family. I began researching adoption (domestic vs international, countries, needs, etc) and it became very clear that ADOPTION was our PLAN A. We began the process on our one year anniversary.
Surprisingly enough the second guessing and angst began with our first home study visit. WHY? Fair question. We presented our sincere and honest reasons and our social worker quickly exclaimed, “You know you are minorities!” Well, we had not thought of it that way, but if you must label us or package us to move forward, then so be it. She explained, adoption is Plan B and is typically for couples with fertility issues as a way to grow their families, and an after- thought for families with biological children. To further place is in the minority, adopting families typically want babies or the very youngest child coming home from the country of choice. Our response was, we're the minority? So what? We were not thinking in terms of most, better, best, we instead feel compelled to parent children whom statistics loudly proclaim are less likely to be placed in families. In fact, we understood how most families choose a country and we were thrilled to have found a program specializing in placing sibling groups and older children.
That was the beginning of others beliefs about what was best for our family along with sadness that people simply assumed we had fertility issues, which we don't. These thinking errors and pleasantries exchanged based on people’s own thoughts, feelings and desires are too raw to ignore. I am ALL about EDUCATION and AWARENESS. My heart feels as though it is leaping out of chest with LOVE for my two older daughters! I NEVER IMAGINED the LOVE I could experience for these precious girls born in my heart! We are elated to have been matched with an almost 12 and a 8 year old. We know that it may not be a walk in the park, no parent has the guarantee that their biological child(ren) or adopted young child will not have challenges. We are aware that this journey is full of unknowns, life is full of unknowns, and these two girls have great worth and we WILL NOT walk in fear. Our faith in God offers us the comfort and the reassurance that God will equip us emotionally, physically and spiritually as needed. As we look at the girl's history, we believe that God destined them for our family many years ago and now realize that, without knowing it, we have advocated for these two specific girls since the first home study meeting. In fact we changed homestudy agencies to INCREASE our age as our initial agency could not make sense of our Plan A despite recommendations from our adoption agency, our highly qualified psychologist, Peru's request for us to increase our age based on our file and our unwavering commitment. REMEMBER, we chose our adoption agency based on their commitment to older children and sibling groups.
So, PLEASE consider the next time you hear a family adopting (without biological children) that it may be that their plan A, that trying to fit children into their existing families based on all the criteria, that they may desire to be a family to children home just as they are (this is how God brings us to Him) and meet their needs and not eliminate them based on existing family situations that do not meet Hague or adoption agency criteria.
Please know that we initially desired to keep our choice of adoption as Plan A private, as not to draw attention to ourselves or appear to be making a judgement on others who view it as a plan B. HOWEVER, some of the responses we've heard from folks has caused us to re-evaluate our privacy on the lack of fertility issues and and instead has caused us to want to share our passion to DEFEND the cause of the orphan..... OLDER ORPHANS particularly. We WELCOME you to share in our JOY.... there is NO sorrow.
