How adoption has changed me

Although I have always been interested in adoption, we seriously started the process because we wanted a family. We envisioned our life with just the two of us and it felt...flat. No children to share life's joys and sorrows, no grandchildren. Even though I enjoy our life together and we're thankful, we wanted a family. (I know not everyone has this adoption option, so I am not trying to hurt anyone; just sharing our thoughts.)

Not only would we have a family, we could offer a home to children who wouldn't have had one. Sounds like a win-win to me.

But then my eyes and heart were opened. And, just like that, the plight of the orphan changed my life.

I think I've cried at least once a day for the last month. Even before that, my thoughts about adoption went something like this: I want to! I can't! I don't want to! I should want to! I can do this! I can't! Someone else would be better! What if there is no one else? Help me, God!

If you want to find the statistics, you can find them easily. They are really, really ugly. So ugly that I am ashamed that it took us this long to do this. Here's one: 90% of the girls who leave Russian orphanages at age 16 end up as prostitutes. 

But on the other hand, I read books about adoption. How, even as an infant, a child mourns the loss of his/her mother. They know the voice that carried them. It gets even worse as the child gets older. For every cry that isn't answered, every new caregiver change, each month without nurturing, their brain actually changes. Normal situations seem scary and another loss is just around the corner to them. They don't know how to emotionally react to normal situations.

The adoptive parents have their work cut out for them. It's not enough to love the child and provide a consistent, safe environment. They have to help the child learn how respond appropriately, to form their identity even with all the changes and loss they've already experienced, and to attach to their new family.

It's scary. 

I can understand why more people don't adopt or do foster care. It's disruptive. It must be so hard to be a parent anyway, without the added challenges. Someone else, with more discipline, stamina, perseverance, would be better at this.

Someone else would be better, but someone else is not here.

Our agency has a blog in which they post pictures or videos of waiting children. Often, these children have special medical needs or they're getting close to aging out of the system. In other words, it's hard to find a family for them.

I watched this video and cried. Then I tried telling Bryan about it and I cried again. And I'm crying again as I write this. It pierces my heart.

And that's why this has been a life-changing experience. We're walking into this with our eyes as wide open as they can be with our rose-colored glasses ripped off. No matter how imperfect our childhood was, we were given a precious gift. I didn't deserve that gift more than the boy in the video or our two children. Yet I have been given so much...and I didn't even know how much I had.

Anyway, despite how scared I must sound (and we are!), we really are excited to meet and love our children. Even though we don't feel capable AT ALL, we will do our best.

My sister has this quote at her house: There's no way to be a perfect mother, but there are a million ways to be a good one.

Hopefully we will be able to be good parents in the ways that truly matter.