This Is Adoption, Too

I'm ready to talk about adoption.

I haven't shared much about our journey since bringing Little Miss home a year and a half ago. We've been too deep in the trenches. Too mentally exhausted. Too afraid of sharing too much.

I haven't shared what it's like because, other than fellow adoptive parents, there are few people who understand. The times when I've tried to explain I've been met with blank stares or a lot of, "You're making too big a deal out of this." So, I talk to my small circle of support, and I get advice from counselors, and I pray without ceasing, and I eat a lot of chocolate.

But I'm ready to more openly share what adoption looks like in real life. Not to scare you, but to give you an honest look at both the good and the bad.

Adoption is beautiful, and terrifying, and exciting, and depressing. It is fighting to bring home a baby you've never met but whom you already love like your own. And it's getting her home only to realize that while you DO love her just as much as you love your bio kids, you also love her... differently.

Adoption is a joyful journey. There is so much to celebrate in the little victories of each day. So much love to go around. So much happiness to go along with adding another child to the home. But it's also living in a state of high alert 24/7 waiting for the next shoe to drop. That is your new normal and you learn to thrive within the catastrophes. 

Adoption is waiting out the storms. It's seeing the stress in your bio kids' eyes from listening to the screams and watching the rebellion. It's seeing behavior in your youngest that you know with 100% certainty he would never have attempted had it not been for his adopted sibling, and it's fighting resentment that she has, to an extent, stolen the innocence of her baby brother.

Adoption is spending six hours engaged in a battle over a "simple" thing like your child refusing to pick up the spoon she dropped on the floor just because you told her to. It's knowing that at times your little girl would literally rather die than submit to your authority. It's dealing with compulsive lying on an hourly basis. And it's finally, after months of struggling, finding strength in the tiniest little breakthrough.

Adoption is constantly being questioned about your parenting tactics. It's being told that she doesn't understand what you're telling her to do by people she has so thoroughly convinced that "she's still learning English" and that you are being too hard on her. It's being told that she is so sweet, so compliant, and so friendly that she can't possibly have any degree of RAD. Because they don't understand that the triangulation and manipulation are so subtle that most of the time her parents are the only ones who can see it, even when it happens right in front of other people (which, by the way, makes you as a mom feel crazy and mean and full of self-doubt). But no, she's too sweet to have RAD. They would know.

Adoption is being judged by other people for insisting that she obey fully and completely and exactly, because they don't see how she tries to maintain control by only obeying to a certain degree. To them it is "close enough." They don't understand that if you don't insist on "exactly" rather than "close" when you know what she's capable of, then she will see her parents as weak and untrustworthy and incapable of taking care of her.

Adoption is having to teach a child that it's not okay to pinch herself. It's holding a raging little girl while she hits and growls at you. It's being asked if she always smiles so much and answering honestly that she does, but being inwardly heartbroken because you know that half of the smiles are fake.

Adoption is knowing that everything you researched, all the training you received, and all the advice other adoptive parents gave you pre-adoption is true. It's also accepting that knowing it and living it are two very different things. You were prepared as much as possible for how hard it was going to be. But that doesn't make it any less hard.

Adoption is always being asked how she's doing, how she's adjusting, how she's succeeding, but rarely being asked how you're feeling, how you're adapting, or what you need.

Adoption is such a perfect picture of God's love for us, in more ways than I could possibly understand before we began this adventure. Parenting a child who fights you tooth and nail, who resists your love, and who wants to go back to what she knows as safe even if it was miserable... It gives you such a clear picture of how God must feel when we pull away from Him and long to go back into the darkness from which He drew us. Adoption is redemption, and it is so worth it. But it isn't Anne of Green Gables.

I feel like we received some of the best training an adoptive parent can get. We had three years of gathering resources, and hearing stories, and being taught by the experts. But still, nothing prepares you for that moment when you look at the child you brought into your home and you think, what have we done?

I've shared the milestones and happy moments. The shiny new wheelchair, the first steps, the funny sayings, and the heart-melting pictures. But now I'm ready to share the rest of the story. Not because I want anyone to feel sorry for us or in any way think less of my daughter. I'm not sharing to scare people away from adoption but because I want MORE people to adopt - with their eyes wide open.

This is adoption. This is real life. And this is where we need more people willing to step in. We need more people willing to adopt kids from hard places and love them through their darkest, scariest moments. And we need more people to come alongside adoptive families with understanding, supporting them without question. Without judgment. Without doubt.

So many people want to love on our little girl, and we are so grateful and blessed by that. But if you can hear this in the way it is intended: She doesn't need you, because she has us. 

But we need you.

Oh, so desperately, we need your love and your understanding, and your help. We need you to let us share what the last year has really been like. We need you to tell us that you know it's hard even if you don't know exactly what it's like, and that it's okay that we don't always get it right. And we need you to send us lots and lots of chocolate.

"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9).

Praise be to the Father who adopted us out of darkness and into His light. He has carried us through, and we will continue to hold to His promises.