Even though we read the books, we combed the websites, we sat through the videos, and we listened to the podcasts, we were unprepared. When it came down to the real hurt, the real struggle, the real questions with our real child …
Nothing can ever, truly prepare you.
Nothing can make a conversation where you try to give words to a brokenness from which one can never truly escape any easier. No amount of “I love you,” no number of hugs can ever cover the painful undercurrent in the heart of a child who has suffered a painful loss even though he is now surrounded with more love and joy than he can ever fully comprehend.
Adoption is messy.
It is the willing acceptance– no, the invitation— into your home, your family, your heart– of a kind of desperate ache and uncomfortable, soul-shaking new norm that reshapes everything you ever knew. About children. About parenting. About yourself.
It is the weight of a tired child shifting on your lap in a doctor’s office as you explain that you can’t fill in certain black holes that exist in a medical history.
It is your expectant, eager son asking if a birthmom you have never met and can’t ever contact can join you at the zoo.
It is a family tree with roots, and branches, and something like nests that perch in forks: open roosts for the welcome new lives to be grafted into the ever-growing community of souls.
It is marveling at a skill or trait, and being unable to discern if it has sprung from nature, or nurture, or God’s own well of unique contrivances.
It is a child sobbing, red-eyed and begging you not to make him get married, not even when he is an adult. Because, “Momma, I want to live with you forever. Don’t ever go. Never.”
Adoption is beautiful, and hard, and life-changing, and so, so much more. It is parenting at its best and its worst. It is the love of Christ poured out, every day, in the hardest places of a child’s heart. It is the grace of God breathed soft into the most timid corners of a Momma’s mind, where she wonders if, truly, she can be the mother these precious children gifted to her deserve.
Nothing can prepare you for parenting a child who doesn’t share your DNA but has taken up residence in your heart and soul. It is a singular act that catapults you into an emotional upheaval when you least expect it, as you journey, together, through the hard truths and the unknowns. Nothing can tell you how you will feel, or what he will ask, or when the right time will come in which to tackle this issue or that.
But for all the tears, for all the hurt, for all the fumbling in the dark as you do your best …
For all this, there is such blessing, and love, and amazing joy. All of it undeserved. All of it freely given by a God who not only chose you, but chose your child, too.
There is nothing that can prepare you for adoption. And there’s nothing quite like it, either.
I link up posts with these wonderful hosts: Diamonds in the Rough, Life in a Breakdown, Sunday Best Showcase, Teach Beside Me, Finishing Strong, Mama Moment Monday, The Modest Mom, Mama Moments Mondays, Monday’s Musings,Making Your Home Sing Monday, Playdates at the Wellspring, A Pinch of Joy, Titus 2sday, Titus 2 Tuesday, Growing Homemakers, Babies & Beyond, Teaching What is Good, Missional Call, Essential Things, Create With Joy, Hope in Every Season, For the Kids Fridays, Preschool Creations, Pin Me Party, Learn & Link, Frugal Homeschool Friday.
Beautiful, Heather.
It is such a leap of faith to adopt a child, and it sounds like your son has been very fortunate to have found you to be his parents.
This post makes my heart ache. The anticipation of adoption is bittersweet for us. Knowing what our future children must be enduring now is nearly unbearable as we wait and pray for Him to bring them into our lives. I feel we are as prepared as we can be, and yet we research on, trying to do our best by these precious ones who are coming our way.