type of child desired

the "type of child desired" forms were the hardest for me on so many levels. basically, these are the forms where you specify what you are and are not willing to accept. things like...

boy or girl

infant or older child

twins, triplets or more

siblings

emotional abuse

physical abuse

special needs

terminally ill children

because we were adopting from the philippines at this point, we didn't have to decide on race. that was decided for us. also, because we were adopting internationally, we didn't have to decide on an open or closed adoption (aka the type of relationship we would have with the biological parents). that too was decided for us.

however, those other questions were hard. what made them harder was that there was a yes, no or maybe column. you don't even want to know how many maybes we had.

there were two big things for me in this part of the process. the first was that i had to realize that God has not called us all to the same thing. not all of us are called by him to raise terminally ill children (yep, that was a question). and here's where i really started wrestling, i would not for a second ponder not having julia or abby in my life if they became terminally ill or somehow contracted HIV or were born with special needs or fill in another hundred scenarios we were having to evaluate. i would rise up (by His grace, of course!), and i would love my children. but choosing. choosing is hard. how do you say yes to one child in need and no to another? not to mention that i didn't know what half of the medical conditions were! (so grateful for great nurse friends!)

we prayed. we pondered. we thought practically: a child with legs in braces or in a wheelchair would necessitate us moving (our house isn't big enough for them to maneuver with any amount of ease). and then we thought about who God is (if He calls us to have a child in a wheelchair, He'll provide a bigger house). can you see the seesaw effect in our hearts. it was HARD.

where did we land? we said no to most major physical special needs. we said yes to most emotional special needs. and there were lots of maybes. i so so so wanted to say yes to everything, but that is not where we felt like He was guiding us. i still wrestle with feeling less than because of that, but good grief. i need to let it go!

which leads to the second thing that i learned. He said yes to everything on my list.

sassy-YES

migraines-YES

stubborn-YES

strong-willed-YES

thyroid issues-no problem

and not only that, my list was actually much much worse. when the God of the universe chose to bring me into his family, to adopt me and call me His own, the "type of child" that He desired was dead. nothing attractive. nothing desirable. no cute baby smile. just dead. and He said, "yes. i choose her."

and if that wasn't enough, the cost was so much greater. my adoption fees were astronomical. He had to give up His perfect, flawless Son's life to gain me. seems like a pretty lame trade. but man, He must have seen the potential of redemption. all glory to Him.

paperwork.

paperwork.

yep. it's one of the things that deter people from adopting. everybody makes it sound terrible. and i'm not going to lie, there's alot of it. and there are a ton of questions that are hard. things like:

what is your first childhood memory?

describe your relationship with your parents and their personalities?

what reoccurring dream do you have?

what are your greatest strengths?

what are your greatest weaknesses?

i felt like i was auditioning for something, but i didn't know what the right answers were. there were things that we had learned to be vague about--like our discipline philosophy. the challenge for me was not to share more than i needed to. not to overanalyze. to just answer the stinking questions.

another challenge was making time. julia was 2. abby was 5. i was homeschooling for the first time. i was TIRED. when i did have down time, i didn't want to sit and fill out paperwork. i wanted to chill. so yeah, the paperwork took a long long time.

and then there was helping jon to answer his questionnaires. we found that if we sat and discussed the questions and i typed his answers, it went alot faster for him. one road trip, we got one whole section of questions done. such VICTORY!

probably the hardest paperwork for us though was the type of child desired forms. i'll talk about that more later. it deserves a post of its own.

then there is paperwork that is just tedious. doctor's visits for physicals. bank statements that have to be notarized. hoops to jump through. those didn't bother me as much. i like checking things off. so, it was just a matter of doing it. we were done with all of our paperwork by early spring of 2010. all that was left before we waited for our child was the homestudy interviews. the final hurdle!!

bonding, connecting and ownership

i'm going to jump ahead to the now...mostly because these are the thoughts that swirl when there is a quiet moment (and since there are few of those these days, i try to make the most of them). writing helps me to process, and these are the things i am wrestling through.

connecting. what does it really mean to feel bonded to your child? to feel connected? to feel like you belong together? and why oh why do we put so much pressure on ourselves and each other for that to happen quickly?

i remember when abby was born, i was a mess. she was my first. she was an emergency c-section. it would take an hour and a half just to wake her up to eat. don't ask how long it took to get her to actually eat. i had mastitis. she had thrush...which she shared. are you getting the picture yet? it was rough. oh, and she was a screamer. probably caused by the constant yakking from her reflux. i remember dear friends coming in to cuddle my precious baby saying, "don't you love her like you've never loved anyone else before?" and i thought, "NO! i hardly know her. everything about her is HARD." i would just smile, and they filled in their own blanks. i loved her, but i wasn't gooey with love for her.

several weeks went by and i heard that same question over and over. finally, in the middle of the night as jon and i passed each other in the hall to trade shifts, i asked him, "do you love her more than you've loved anyone else before?" he said, "no." and i felt relief. utter relief that my amazing husband wasn't just oozing with love either. connecting to abs took time. we got there though.

when we talked about adoption, i knew that it was going to take time to feel connected. i wasn't going to have 9 months to get used to the idea of this person being a part of our lives. i wasn't going to feel them moving around inside of me. most of all, they weren't going to be (and here's the phrase that i am growing to despise more and more every. single. day.) "officially mine" for a long time. i was expecting it to be hard, but what i forgot about was the pressure that comes from feeling like i need to feel connected. both the internal pressure and the external pressure. am i making any sense at all?

i'll share more of our story with benjamin's birthmom later, but let's just put it simply for now. i adore her. absolutely wholeheartedly love that woman. when we went to see benjamin for the first time in the hospital, i wasn't his mom. she was. she had not signed her rights away. she was the one calling the shots on his circumcision timing and what formula to give him. i'm not trying to imply that there was any rudeness about her actions at all. it was simply the reality of the situation. the next day, when we went to get him, she had signed her rights over, but as we spent time with her in the hospital, there was still this huge need in my heart to honor her. to respect her freedom to change her mind. to let her be the mom while we were together. then we took him home.

on the way home, he started crying. i tried to comfort him in his carseat, but he didn't know my voice. it brought him no comfort. jon's voice would startle him into crying more. we came home and the girls were beyond excited. jon and i were emotionally toast. we were grieving deeply for his birth momma. i don't think it is possible to hold a woman who is sobbing as she hands you her child and not be shattered. and we were. utterly shattered.

congratulations were piling in, and we were thankful that people were excited for us. but we were sad. broken. and very aware that she could change her mind. i was living for the last 13 days in the tension of savoring every day as a gift knowing that i was by no means promised tomorrow with this precious boy (as is true for all things and people in our lives!) and trying to connect. to take him in as "mine."

through the wrestling, i feel like the Lord has been teaching me some things about ownership, connecting and belonging. and about love. i'll be honest though. i am very much at the beginning of both learning and processing these things. and i'm a bit raw. so please be gracious.

one of the biggest things that i am learning is that i am called to parent this precious boy today. God has given me today with him, and today, he is mine to love, to guide, to nurture and to take care of. there is grace for this day...and if he isn't mine a month from now, there will be grace then too. i must, must, must live in today though.

loving him is more than the melting feeling in my gut (which is a beautiful feeling, don't get me wrong). loving him is giving up sleep, shower and the ability to pee when i want to. loving him is holding him for seven hours straight because it gives him comfort when he is in pain (from constipation-no worries, he's fine). loving him is doing research on formula to find out what is best. loving him is praying over him. praying for his birth mom. loving him is choosing my words carefully when i share his story with others. those things are love. those things will connect my heart to him. serving him has and will continue to bond us.

God has chosen jon and i for this season of benjamin's life to guard and protect him. and for now, that is official enough. i know that probably sounds silly and obvious. but it has been a huge relief for me to realize that i was putting more stock in when the government said that he was ours then what God had called me today. again, emphasis on today.

so that's where i am now. still learning. still processing. bonding more and more with this beautiful boy every day.

agency #2

i looked at steven curtis chapman's site to see what agencies they recommended. it was a long shot, i knew, but i needed help and was out of options. once there, i found an agency in north carolina. it was in a small town that i had been to many times to visit some dear college friends. their website said that they did adoptions in the philippines. i called and wound up talking to the director for about an hour...on my first call there. this was hugely significant after the experience i had just had. he had just returned from the philippines and had answers to questions that i had been dying for. he was encouraging, supportive and mostly available. so over the next week or two, we kept calling and asking more questions. we were thrilled to have somebody really helping us. we put down our deposit and got things rolling with them. it seemed to be a perfect fit.

changes

***disclaimer: this was our experience and is no way meant to speak ill of anyone. we want to share our journey and what we learned from it. we know that others have had different experiences, and we are grateful for the ways that they have been helped and loved.***

we started with bethany in atlanta. starting the adoption process is like buying a house for the first time. i will never forget how overwhelmed i felt by all of the lingo and verbiage that was thrown around that i was somehow supposed to understand when we bought our house. interest rates, inspections, closing dates, countering an offer...i felt like i had been thrown into the deep end without floaties for the first time. the adoption world has its own rules and terminology. dossier, placement, background checks--all of these things that i had no idea what they meant, and i was supposed to get started on them. as the type A person in our marriage, i was in charge of paperwork. yes, there's alot of it. no, it's not horrible. it's mostly a matter of just doing it. which is the challenge. but i am digressing. i'll write more about paperwork later. basically, i was swimming in deep waters and really really wanted someone to coach me through the process. i wanted and needed an advocate. somebody who had our back.

our frustration with bethany was simple. nothing terrible, but frustrating nonetheless. they took days to return a phone call. sometimes longer. and these were for the very simple beginning questions that i had. it was obvious that we weren't going to get the kind of support that we wanted. i figured if it was this hard to find things out at the beginning, it would only be more frustrating as time went on. so after about a month or two of working with bethany, we decided to find another agency.

i remember feeling like time was slipping away. we had "a plan." we had a timeline. we knew when the paperwork needed to be done in order for us to be in the system to get a child by the time we thought would work best for our family. one thing that i have learned over and over in the past two years is that God will even use my procrastination for His purposes. He is the redeemer...the one who buys back what is broken, wasted, abandoned. and i am so glad.

so where to now? we were clueless. time to start looking for an agency again.

what agency? what country?

at that time, we had three friends that we knew that had adopted children. two of those were international and one was domestic. so, we talked with them to see what agencies they had used. then we looked to see what countries the agencies worked with. from there, we narrowed it down to bethany here in atlanta. they were local, well reputed and were working in asia.

i went to a meeting at bethany here in atlanta and learned a ton about international adoption. funny side story, as i was walking into the meeting the strap on my flip flops broke off. nothing like feeling like a fish out of water (everyone was there with their spouse, and jon was home with the girls) with the addition of hobbling around trying to keep my flip flop somewhat connected to my foot! so anyway, i took the info home to jon. one of the great things that we gained from that meeting was that they had a detailed list of the countries' requirements. we were able to look at our requirements (we weren't able to leave the country for months at a time with jon's job and our small kiddos) and their requirements (at that time china required for you to make a base salary of $30k plus $10k for each child you had in your family plus the one you were adopting). by simply looking at those things, we were able to narrow the field significantly.

the philippines. it fit what we were looking for. the wait time for a child would coincide perfectly when jon would be finishing up school. it was one of the cheapest countries to work with. they had children to adopt that were ages 2-3 which was fine with us. we were fine with not having a baby (funny to look at now!) all of it seemed to make sense. and so we moved forward.

bethany looked good. the philippines looked good. we moved forward in faith trusting that the Lord knew the child he had for us and would get us where we needed to be when we needed to be there.

oh, and by this time it was september or october. narrowing these things down didn't take five minutes. :)

where to go?

so once we decided to move forward, there were lots of questions.

international or domestic?

infant or older?

boy or girl?

special needs?

what agency to use?

and that list got longer the more we looked into things. alot longer.

our first decision was very simple. the conversation went like this. i said to jon, "domestic or international?" he said, "international." i agreed. then, i asked, "what continent?" asia was the logical choice for us as we both have been there and love it so. in about five minutes, we were moving forward to adopt from somewhere in asia.

now, i know that this sounds VERY unspiritual. and i'm going to be honest, it felt very unspiritual. there have been things that we have had to wrestle through on this journey, but i had to come to a place where i realized that i didn't have to wrestle through everything. every part of the journey didn't have to be agonizing. we were trusting that the Lord was leading and directing us--in fact giving our hearts the very desires themselves.

next step. agency.

the beginnings

jon and i talked about adoption when we were dating. we both felt like it was something that we wanted to do. at some point, out there. after we got married, there was a time when we talked about becoming foster parents at one of the Chick-fil-A homes. we both realized quickly that we had neither the life experience or parenting know how to attempt that. so the dream lingered in the backs of our minds waiting for God to say, "now."

on july 4th, 2009, julia was two and napping. i had sat down to read my Bible and journal (one of my favorite ways of conversing with God) when julia woke up crying. she was two, but on that day she wanted to be held and rocked. so NOT the norm. as i was rocking her, i felt like the Lord said, "now. it's time to adopt now." at first, i protested. surely He wanted to talk about something else. surely we weren't going to begin this process now...not when money was tight and jon was getting ready to go back to school. wasn't i going to have more biological children? wasn't that where we were headed?

so while i rocked julia, we talked. i did alot of protesting, and He gently led me through each protest to show me that He would lead and guide. by the time julia had woken up, i was settled. and ready to tell jon. but it was the 4th of july. there was a family picnic and fireworks to go see. this wasn't going to be one of those, "oh by the way..." kind of conversations, but for those of you who know me, my ability to hold something like this in isn't great.

the next day, Sunday (yep, i waited one whole day), jon and i talked. i was fully prepared for him to be taken off guard (i certainly was). i was fully expecting him to put the brakes on the whole thing. i was fully expecting it to take him months to be ready. nope. he said, "wow. that's funny. because i feel like the past week, God has been telling me it's time too." and so, we began.

our journey

i have been feeling this pressing need to capture our adoption story...our at least the last two years of it. to put these memories into ink before they fade into a fuzzy blur. i didn't feel compelled to write at all before now, but that has changed.

so in between school, diapers, burping and bottles, i want to spend the next few days (or weeks, perhaps?) writing down where the Lord has taken us. i want to stop and catalog his faithfulness in the midst of my many fears...even now. and i want to share with any of you who want to read more of our story. so, feel free to read along.