Do you ever find that you have seasons of loving better? When you're your best self (or close to it) and you find that the overflow of that is full of patience, grace, understanding, compassion, and joy?
I desperately want this.
Lately I have been feeling exhausted. Owen has become very clingy as he's entered the separation anxiety stage. You never know when he will cry when I try to pass him off to someone else. Whereas I used to be able to put him down on the ground with some toys so that I could get stuff done, now he cries the moment his bottom touches the floor and then crawls after me, crying and whining, "Mama, mama, mama." I have to admit it's heartbreaking. But it's also tiring. But I know, too, that he won't be this little forever, and so I am soaking it up, holding him and comforting him as much as he needs.
We've entered the homestudy phase of the adoption process. It begins with us completing the online adoption training geared towards understanding attachment, post-adoption behaviors, our rights, what to expect from the kids, and basically how to parent children that legally yours but not completely emotionally yours, but ones you've been entrusted to care for for a lifetime nonetheless. It's a huge honor and privilege, but it is also terrifying. Just going through some of the material today online I was struck at how truly ill-prepared we really are to take this journey.
But can we ever be prepared for this?
You would think that after 2+ years of caring for, loving, encouraging, disciplining, raising, and living life with these kids would give me some confidence in how to move forward in the next leg of our lives together. But honestly, I feel like I am back at square one. It is one thing to agree to adopt, and even want to adopt because you love your kids. It's another thing to consider all of the ramifications and what that looks like for all of us for the rest of our lives.
For example, questions like how much contact will they have with their birth family once the adoption is finalized?
And how will we honor their race, culture and heritage as an interracial adoptive family?
And what will holidays and birthdays look like going forward? Will we have two separate events, one for our family and one for theirs? Or will we do a combined event?
And finally, how will we meet all of their needs when so often we are not the ones they want?
Whenever someone asks me what it's like to be a foster parent I tell them that it is hard and messy. I am not one to gloss over or glorify something that is difficult. Sure, there are rewards and I love the boys as if they were my own flesh and blood, but I would be lying if I didn't say the truth about what it really feels like on a daily basis.
A lot of times, it feels like unrequited love.
Others, it feels like a battle; a civil war.
Sometimes, it feels like we are trying to survive inside a psych ward.
And yet there are days, too, when it just feels like family. Like we have always been together.
Those days are our saving grace and reminder as to why we do this.
But most days, the mundane, emotionally-difficult, behaviorally-challenged, hurtful days are more often than not. This training reminds me that those days will continue to occur once the adoption is finalized...some things never change; they just become more manageable and less frequent.
That's not the point, though.
The point is that I, we, GET to love these boys and raise them as our own in spite of our sin, regardless of our abilities, in the face of every obstacle we've encountered along the way: We get to be their mom and dad forever.
Forever.
There's that word again.
Heavy.
Real.
Permanent.
Someday soon, they will be ours, and that will begin a whole new process of learning, forgiving, grieving, rejecting, accepting, rejoicing.
And I'm the lucky one, because through it all, I still get to hug and kiss them goodnight.
Through it all, I get to be their forever mom.
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