National Adoption Month
Facebook tells me that November is National Adoption Month.
The path I've been walking the past few years has made the word 'adoption' immediately stand out to me when I come across it. It's a word I never used to pay any attention to but has now become everything, especially during this period of waiting.
Thanks to Amy Poehler's Smart Girls facebook page, I was introduced to this blog.
The blog features an adoption story each day of the month coming from all different perspectives and including both good and bad experiences. I find that I can't stop reading them. I'm reading it like a how-to manual or a textbook and it makes me feel productive, but I also find that it scares me to my core.
I keep thinking I can learn how to do all of this the best way, so I take mental notes of what to do and not to do...But then I realize something that was a big no-no in one story wasn't such a big no-no in another story and I get frustrated and worried and confused. What are the right answers???
Then I remember that people are totally complicated and react to things differently and that there is no absolute right way to make my child feel loved and wanted and safe and whole and that I probably wouldn't completely succeed at it anyway, even if there was a formula, because adoption is hard. Adoption is a by-product of a fallen world. It's not how things are supposed to be and as a result, my child will feel all the feels, even the bad feels, and I can't let myself consider it all a failure when that happens. It doesn't do us any good to try and make the situation perfect, to erase the hard parts of adoption. to try and pretend like we have all the answers and that everything is awesome all the time, or even that we're always 'fine'.
Mercifully, God is the expert at using these unfortunate consequences of sin to illuminate His glory. I'll keep reading these stories and let myself feel the whole spectrum of every emotion, and I'll remind myself that God is still in this journey with me. He has called me to do the best I can for a child who needs someone to do their mere best for them; and God will reveal Himself and His glory all along the way in the beautiful moments that we'll experience together, including the ugly-beautiful moments (Note to self: be more accepting of the inevitable ugly-beautiful in my life).
I feel so soap-boxy when I write about adoption and that's an uncomfortable feeling for a wall-flower like me. I really hope I don't come across annoyingly preachy. Mostly, I just selfishly need to process through writing with the main goal of surviving this life... with maybe an added bonus that someone out there might gain encouragement or empathy or understanding or renewed faith as a result of my sharing.
With that, I'll leave you with this video of Cotton canoodling the snow.
The path I've been walking the past few years has made the word 'adoption' immediately stand out to me when I come across it. It's a word I never used to pay any attention to but has now become everything, especially during this period of waiting.
Thanks to Amy Poehler's Smart Girls facebook page, I was introduced to this blog.
The blog features an adoption story each day of the month coming from all different perspectives and including both good and bad experiences. I find that I can't stop reading them. I'm reading it like a how-to manual or a textbook and it makes me feel productive, but I also find that it scares me to my core.
I keep thinking I can learn how to do all of this the best way, so I take mental notes of what to do and not to do...But then I realize something that was a big no-no in one story wasn't such a big no-no in another story and I get frustrated and worried and confused. What are the right answers???
Then I remember that people are totally complicated and react to things differently and that there is no absolute right way to make my child feel loved and wanted and safe and whole and that I probably wouldn't completely succeed at it anyway, even if there was a formula, because adoption is hard. Adoption is a by-product of a fallen world. It's not how things are supposed to be and as a result, my child will feel all the feels, even the bad feels, and I can't let myself consider it all a failure when that happens. It doesn't do us any good to try and make the situation perfect, to erase the hard parts of adoption. to try and pretend like we have all the answers and that everything is awesome all the time, or even that we're always 'fine'.
Mercifully, God is the expert at using these unfortunate consequences of sin to illuminate His glory. I'll keep reading these stories and let myself feel the whole spectrum of every emotion, and I'll remind myself that God is still in this journey with me. He has called me to do the best I can for a child who needs someone to do their mere best for them; and God will reveal Himself and His glory all along the way in the beautiful moments that we'll experience together, including the ugly-beautiful moments (Note to self: be more accepting of the inevitable ugly-beautiful in my life).
I feel so soap-boxy when I write about adoption and that's an uncomfortable feeling for a wall-flower like me. I really hope I don't come across annoyingly preachy. Mostly, I just selfishly need to process through writing with the main goal of surviving this life... with maybe an added bonus that someone out there might gain encouragement or empathy or understanding or renewed faith as a result of my sharing.
With that, I'll leave you with this video of Cotton canoodling the snow.
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