More Adoption Thoughts

I think sometimes when people hear about families who have gone through infertility and then adopted their first instinct is to feel sorry for them. I can say I'm 100% sure that those families don't want you to feel sorry for them. They want you to know what a blessing those children are and how blessed they feel to be their parents. I don't want anyone to feel sorry for us or feel like we "deserved" to have another biological baby. We are way past the stage of grieving the loss of "what might have been" and are looking forward to the day we get the call from our agency. I've always said that I wouldn't wish the feelings of infertility on anyone, but now I wish everyone could feel how we feel now. We feel that God has blessed us by letting us experience two of the greatest miracles a person can have. The first one is C - I'm so lucky to have been able to experience a pregnancy and the miracle of his birth. The second one is the miracle of adoption. I am so thankful that God is allowing us to experience the best of both worlds.

Adoption is something that most don't think about until they become directly involved in it. J and I talked this weekend about if we had ever in our lives thought about adoption before this point. J had never thought about it at all. I on the other hand had given it some thought when I was younger. From a young age I always wondered if I would be able to have children, I'm not sure why, just a feeling that I had that it may not be so easy for me. I remember thinking that when I turned 30 (because at 14 that seemed so old) if I wasn't married or didn't have any children I would adopt. I also remember in High School seeing a 20/20 special on orphanages in Romania and I wanted to get on the next plane and bringing all of those babies back. I think God placed those early feelings for adoption on my heart at a young age for a reason.

Lack of education is a large problem when it comes to adoption. I think that is in someways why a persons first reaction may be to feel sorry for those who couldn't have biological children. I know lack of education is what held me back from domestic adoption in the beginning. I was scared of birthparents being able to come back at any time to take the baby. I learned after our initial meeting at Bethany that was false. There are a lot of adoption myths floating around that keep people from knowing what a great God thing adoption is. The myths then tend to cause fear in those who don't understand it. I know that our families are hesitant about our adoption because they don't want to see us get hurt when an adoption falls through. Notice I say when and not if. We are prepared to have at least one adoption where the mother decides to parent, it is normal for every family to experience at least one loss during the adoption process. We are prepared for that loss because we will know that was not the child God had in mind for us. I'm not saying we won't be upset and that there won't be any tears shed, but we will remember that God does have a plan. We've seen his plan unfolding up to this point and we know he won't let us down.

I'll finish this post with a neat story from the family at the training on Saturday. When they were waiting for their second child they had an adoption loss. They actually had two birthmothers decide to parent within a month, but this story is about the second one. They were supposed to be picking up the baby that day when they got the call that the birthmother had decided to parent. They had everything ready and had even named him Matthew James. Of course the family was devastated. The mother spent some time deeply upset and just mad about it. One day her mother-in-law (the grandma at the meeting) told her that she prayed for Matthew James every day. It hit the mother then that her mother-in-law may have been the only one praying for Matthew James. The mother wasn't praying for him, she had been upset and only thinking about her loss. She realized that God gave them that loss so that little boy would have someone to pray for him. They knew the situation he was in wasn't a good one and if they hadn't had that loss Matthew more than likely wouldn't have had anyone praying for him. Within a few months the family was able to adopt their second child, which was the child God had in mind for them.