Thank me later Thursday: adoption

{My dear elegant eight, I know several of you are adoptive parents already and these are things you know.  Please feel free to weigh in heavily in comments to illuminate or correct.  As I know you know the passion to share this miracle with whosoever will...}

You need to know some things when you jump in.

1) this is a pain in the rear.  A 14 year-old in the backseat of a Buick can become a parent, but they are treating you like you need the security clearance of the President of the United States.  No, it was probably easier for him.  Anything worth having is worth making a sacrifice for.

2) there are as many approaches to adoption as there are people.  It is not just for infertile couples or same sex couples or couples who have 17 others who just keep going. There are a lot of really ordinary folks.  It is not just international, or just state division of family services, or just agency or just independent.  If you are patient, you will stumble across the right path for you.

3)sometimes you don't choose your adoption, your adoption chooses you.  Fair warning: one of these days you will be minding your own business and a child will be in front of you.  And the voice you hear will not be yours or the child's; it will be the voice of God.  You will know.  It is soft and feels like a breeze blowing across you.  Don't be afraid.

There will be plenty of time for that later.

4)shop around for home study agencies if you get that opportunity.  Don't feel like you have to go with the most popular one in town.  Find the human you can work well with.  Get recommendations; do your homework.  We had a hard time finding the right person, but when we found her; we knew, and things really fell into place.

5)don't panic.  I hope none of the people I worked with on either of our adoptions reads this.  I am a panicker.  But I am slowly learning that it is going to be okay.  If you do things out of order, your team of professionals will let you know.  You are not the only one who hasn't known.  The worker who visits your home is not going to look behind the fridge for dirt.  A good SW is looking to qualify you, not disqualify.  She may have been into homes that children had to be removed from and has seen worse than you can imagine. 

6)pass your newly learned life experience along to the next guy.  We who have done it know that we adopt partly so that the next guy will see that it is just something we do. Who knows whose inspiration you may be?  Maybe they have been thinking about it for months and your hope and joy "shoves them right over the edge."*  Because...

7)this is about a child.  Who looks in the mirror and wonders why. Who doesn't get to look around the dinner table and claim those he sees as his own(even that bubba who got more mac and cheese).  Who doesn't have the security of a nest.  Who God places on your heart.  Whom you recognize on sight.  In the twinkling of an eye, the line between him needing you and you needing him blurs.

In our adoption, right now, we are in a holding pattern waiting for a little of this and that to take place.  I am nervous and distractable.

But this one thing I know...

it is good in the sight of God.

There is plenty of time for you to...Thank me later.



You are always invited to join the fun at pBd for "Thank Me Later Thursday."



*Mickey's friend, Tom Wilson.