I feel like I need to be honest here. But I am a little nervous to be honest here. I have been nervous to be honest with myself. But I think I am coming to grips with stuff, so now I need to talk about it. I am nervous to share because I am afraid I will sound like a jerk and people won’t get it, or they will get it and think that I am a jerk. All that being said, I feel like I need to be honest here.
Here goes: I have not been very excited about adopting. **sigh** Shad and I have mulled it over, prayed about, talked incessantly about it and know that this is something that God is asking us to do. Yes, we could have said no, but, to us, obedience is way more important than us being uncomfortable, so we said yes. Just yes. Not, yay we are so excited to add another kiddo to our family! Just yes.
I have thrown myself into adoption stuff. I am on the team that put together a retreat in our area for foster and adoptive moms back in November, Called to Love. I went to that retreat excited and came home feeling overwhelmed and inadequate. I keep waiting for that feeling. That warm, fuzzy, we-are-adopting! feeling. Mostly what I feel is anxiety, fear, inadequacy and doubt. See what I mean about being a jerk?
I heard about this documentary from the girls from Called to Love at our last meeting. I thought since it was about adoption, I should probably watch it. Sunday night, Shad and I watched it together. Through all the information being thrown at us, I came away, finally, feeling it. I started to feel that fire that I’ve seen in other adoptive moms. The this-is-my-kid-and-I-am-going-to-fight-for-him feeling.
What God really showed me through this documentary was that kids need and deserve a family. Every. Single. Child. deserves parents that will love them and nurture them. Hands down! Not only does their spirit need it, their brains will stop developing without out human love and contact. There are kids all over the world that are just wasting away, physically and emotionally, in orphanages. Just passing the time. God was telling me not only do I need to be obedient about adopting a kiddo from Bulgaria, I need to be excited about it, on fire about it! It’s life and death and I am just sitting here in my nice cozy house with a belly full of food pondering whether this was a good decision. Oh my!
So, I say to you: We are adopting!! We are adding a new member to our family and he/she will be from Bulgaria!
**Quick Update: We are thick into the process. Over Christmas break we did our home study. This is where we not only invite a person into our house to listen to our life stories and judge us based upon our life stories, but we pay them to do it. (While it was a bit awkward, it wasn’t too terrible, mostly.) We are waiting on our agency to look over the home study report and approve it. Then we move onto our immigration paper work. After that is approved (takes 8-12 weeks), then we are finally ready to send our mountain of paper work to Bulgaria! Once the government in Bulgaria (Ministry of Justice) approves us, we will officially be on the wait list for a referral. That will, hopefully, be by late spring, early summer.**
1 comment:
Oh my friend, i wish I had read this sooner, so I could be the first to say: YOU ARE NOT A JERK! I think you just happen to be surrounded by a lot of people in the adoption community and have had more of an earful of difficult reality than most of us were privvy to at your stage of the process. I'm sad that we may have stolen a bit of your naive excitement. But I remember when we were waiting, someone blogged about how they were CONCERNED by the level of excitement shown by some adoptive families. There was too much fun and games, and not enough sober reality. Adoption and adopting is beautiful and needed, but it's not a party. I am comforted by your lack of excitement, because I think that means YOU GET IT. You get that this is not about the IDEA of doing something dramatic and exotic, it's about RAISING A CHILD and it will probably be challenging. Your family and your child are better off for your calm acceptance.
ALSO, it's very hard to be excited about a nameless, faceless concept. I know you and I feel confident that your excitment will kick in when you SEE that face, that child, and KNOW that he or she is yours. Then the excitement meets the reality and creates beautiful anticipation.
You're SO not a jerk, my friend. You are going to be a great adoptive mom!
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