Little Blessings

I love watching people’s reactions to the idea of adoption. To me, it was just second nature and I couldn't imagine not doing it. My husband definitely didn't have that kind of reaction but is now really excited about it. It just seemed like the thing to do for our family, knowing the amount of little blessings who needed forever mommies and daddies. We've gotten really powerful reactions of hopefulness as well as questions like, “why would you want to do that???”. I remember someone close to us asking that question. At first I was really hurt and confused about why they had the nerve to ask such a question but then I realized that some people really don’t see adoption as an option for their family.  I use to cry sometime thinking about all the children who don’t have forever families to celebrate their life with them. There are so many things to celebrate when you’re little, you know…all the firsts. The first time you smile, first steps, first time you lost a tooth and walked yourself to the classroom, or tied their shoes all by themselves. Can’t imagine all the little ones who don’t realize what blessings they are. I don’t care if you have one child or seven, you should know there’s just something about them that makes your heart jump, your voice get higher and your lips curl up into a grin. The kids waiting for forever families are special too, they're just waiting for us to tell them. My mother always told me that one of the best gifts that you can give your children is a brother or sister but she forgot to mention that it’s one of the best gifts for the parents too. Our children keep us young at heart, their laughs, contagious, their little voices are like symphonies and it’s not because I had them from my womb, it’s because they're children. God made them all like that on purpose; He knows what He’s doing. So, we’ll trust that. I’m sure we’ll get all kinds of weird and stupid questions about where our daughter came from as well as curious looks when we go out to dinner but I will be nothing but proud of our family. I'll answer their questions and I have a feeling I’ll answer them as honest as their questions pop out of their mouths. I’ve been known to have little patience for adults because it’s all used up on my children…this will be interesting but we’d rather have an interesting life than boring.

I can see the light!

Chris and I received our homestudy packet over a month ago and immediately the anxiety of social workers coming to our home overwhelmed me. Not only did we have to come to terms with our birthmother choosing us to adopt her daughter, but we also had to digest the fact that we had to be "studied". My stubborn "Mama Bear" instinct wanted to throw the papers out the window and scream out my car window, "I already have three kids!!!!!!!! I KNOW how to be a parent!" But thankfully, I've calmed my sharp tongue and understand that it's just the process. Everything has its process. So I aggressively started getting all of our papers together, resumes, tax info, financial info, birth certificates, but there was one thing that I totally just didn't want to do. My "autobiography". Thirty five questions about my upbringing, my strategies as a parent, my life's vision, my relationships with family members (that's an entire book all to itself), ect. ect. I sort of had the Toys R' Us Kids song going on in the back of my head and began realizing how much of an adult I really was and how serious the next few months really are becoming. So while my kids were still and quiet during nap time one afternoon, I got the writer's itch. I grabbed my amazingly organized notebook with my sticky tabbed sticky notes and began to answer, and answer and answer. So I finished my autobiography and I have to say it was not only helpful for myself, in remembering where I came from, but it also gave me the chance to show where I want to be and what kind of family I wanted to create with my husband. So, Chris is finishing up his autobiography tonight and once that's all done we'll compile everything we'll be ready for our home visit. I have to say that I'm glad I had the chance to do my autobiography but remember...I do already know how to be a parent :).

Hard questions...harder answers

"Mommy, why does God make tornadoes?". Lucas has asked questions about forces of nature after evening prayer for the past three weeks wondering why God would let things like that happen. We were stuck in our bedroom closet on and off a few weeks ago because of tornado warnings so naturally, with his soft little heart, he got concerned. To top it off, we had also gone through a huge hurricane right before we moved here to the DFW area and that reminded him of it. Poor thing.  Personally, I love it because it gives me a chance to use my degree (heehee...), have really positive conversations with my boys and get in touch with where their precious little heads are. Lucas also asks lots of questions about my adoption. He knows that I'm adopted, knows my birthmother (his Meme) and naturally has questions about where I came from, how it all worked out and how I got here to be his mommy. Hard and complicated  questions. I will be there first person to admit that I don't have all the right answers. We do our best though and I guess what it comes down to is that there will always be hard questions and talking about them is better than not talking about them. I admit to the boys that I don't know everything (shocker, don't tell my husband) but if we talk and pray about things we can "find out together". Doing things together are always more interesting. I have to give props to my husband this post because Sunday is Father's Day. Without sounding cliche, I am blessed to have one of the most amazing husband's and father to our boys. He's kindness, patience and ability to juggle his family and work amazes me. Being one of three boys it will be very interesting seeing him with is little girl, covered in tutus, pears and tiny shoes. I'm sure he dreams about that every night like I do, NOT! Bottom line, I'm remembering our blessings this week. The boys, questions asked, questions answered, our lives in motion, our baby girl and the time we'll all share together in this short moment we call life.

At a loss for words. Yes...it's me.

Words, I just can’t seem to find the right ones these days. I personally find words incredibly important and I try to use them carefully. They shape your character; build people up, cut you to the core and transform beauty into something tangible. One day, our daughter will read this blog and she’ll be able to hear our uncensored thoughts and prayers for her. Why she’s been in our hearts and dreams since the beginning, the love of her brothers and the hard work and courageousness of her birthmother. The Bible tells us in Proverbs 13:3 that “careful words make for a careful life”. How amazingly careful we need to be, not just with our words, but our actions.

Chris and I, as well as my sisters and a few friends, have been working on our “lifebook” that will be sent to the agency for birthmothers to look through. This will be their peek into our family’s life and their first experience with us as a family. Included in the lifebook is a letter, from us. A letter telling her why we should be her daughter’s parents. How do I do that? Normally, I can bust our songs, papers, blog posts pretty quickly and if it takes over 10 min or so they’re usually really bad. Unfortunately, every time I start the letter I get stuck at the same part, Dear “blank” Yup…that’s basically all I’ve got.  I just don’t have the words. It’s almost like I had them but when I begin to write, they start to disappear into the place that holds all of my sock matches. I know that one night, I’m sure at two in the morning, it’ll come to me and I’ll pop out of bed like I did in college writing songs, and grab my journal and pen and begin to write. So, for now, we’ll be praying for the right words. Careful words of encouragement, courage, health, promise and mostly love. I’d like to thank my friend Jen for sharing her “birthmother letter” with me today. It’s pretty special to read something so sincere, hopeful, uplifting and encouraging. I hope our letter expresses how careful we’ll be with our sweet daughter.

Family Is What You Make of It

Adoption is such an beautiful journey. I was blessed to be able to meet some of my extended family this weekend for my little brother’s wedding. It was amazing to see similarities through and through that I recognized from myself. Unless you’re adopted, you can’t understand what it feels like to come back together with a family who, although you didn’t grow up with, has the same laugh, mannerisms, humor and love. I remember in my first post I was extremely nervous about sharing a blog about our adoption journey because of how close it was to my heart and it really began with my heart in Ethiopia. Now it’s just here, with me with little pieces in tiny places around this country with people whom I’m blessed to call family. If I have learned anything through my own personal journey, it’s that family is what you want it to be. It’s up to you, you have the control and surrounding yourself with loving people leads you to where you need to be.  Ultimately this will lead us to Georgia, where we know we’re suppose to go to pick up our sweet little baby girl. On a lighter note, we’re looking for name suggestions…Chris’ rules, no stones, colors or flowers. That lowers my suggestions down to….NONE! Hoping everyone has a safe Memorial Day!

The Beginning of our Lifebook

This week began the, in my opinion, overwhelming task of creating a "lifebook" for our baby girl. I couldn't help but think that this is something that one, our daughter will be looking at for the rest of her life, and two, the book that will more than likely decide our future. Birthmothers will be looking through it to figure out what our family is all about and why we should be honored to become her child's parents.No pressure or anything. Psh... Although I consider myself a very creative person, I'm no scrapbooker... I have friends who are and I envy their craftiness and skill at matting, detailing and displaying all the pictures of their kids lives, but uploading to Shutterfly is really the best I can do. I was totally fine with that until I had to create our daughter's "lifebook". Luckily (silver lining) I take an ENORMOUS amount of pictures and have very helpful friends and family. I ended up at Michael's with Henry one afternoon to pick up everything I needed and I didn't realize the amount of isles there were for scrapbooking material. Paper, borders, sticky things that you use to make things stick to other things, stencils, stickers, blah blah blah blah....my mind turned to mush and I needed help ASAP. I ended up calling my sister in law who is a super dooper scrapbooker and with Henry screaming in the background the gave me a quick list and I grabbed what I could and got the heck out of dodge. Thank you Naomi...you saved my sanity. My sister Ellen came over tonight and we got started and finished 5 or so pages. *pat on back* I got to thinking about my baby book my mom made for me. She kept every single baby check up form. She updated every month's milestones and even had to add pages to it because she didn't have enough room to fit every bit of information. She also blessed me with this poem and it's written in the front page of my baby book...

"Adopted"

A gift undeserved. A sweet cry in this world of goods bought and sold. She's Epiphany, a baby who comes without my labor. It was a strange trip in the night, it seems we prayed her into existence. She began in the will of my heart, the mother in me leaps to this awaiting babe and I ask the world to sway so she may sleep.

By: Her Mama

Funny how your perspective can change in just a few minutes. Thanks Mama.

He Prepared Me

I have been waiting...and waiting to post this blog post. The past two weeks have been filled with a lot of tears, laughter and smiles and I find it so amazing that everything that we do, on a daily basis, has meaning. Our thoughts, our actions, our interactions with people that we meet ALL have meaning and a higher correlation than we can't really imagine or grasp. I'll first go back to the beginning, the VERY beginning.

I was adopted. Born from, what I believe to be one of the most courageous women I've been blessed to know, and placed into a family who has loved, cared and made me into the woman and mother that I am today. Even as a small child I always knew I would be a mother and adopt. My child's heart felt I was "chosen" into my family and my loyalty stemmed from knowing that they didn't have to take me. They could have said "no" but I was chosen, picked up when I was 6 weeks from Alabama and brought to Texas. What I didn't know at the time, was that I had two brothers. We grew up without each other and although I wouldn't change a thing about my family, there is a load of emotional baggage that goes along with being adopted and balancing your love for your family while also yearning to know who you came from. Children need to know where they came from and I decided a long time ago that I couldn't handle anymore emotional baggage. I have always felt like I have had little pieces of my heart in different places and I couldn't quite put them all together. I didn't want anymore pieces farther away from where they needed to be, right here with me. This is one of the biggest reasons why we chose not to look into domestic adoption. Little did I know that God had been preparing my heart for the past thirty years and I didn't even know it.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago. Application in. Checks written. Ethiopia slows their cases down 90%. We were shocked but hopeful and two days later we were given to opportunity to consider a domestic adoption through a friend who was having a baby girl. All of the emotions came rushing back to me about all the reasons why I couldn't handle it as a mother. How could I balance all of my feelings and thoughts, do the right thing for the baby as well as my other three children who have been waiting anxiously for a sister and what if, God forbid, she wouldn't sign over her rights and we'd have to giver her back? Then what? I was broken and I didn't even have her yet. I kept thinking "But Lord? Why are you bringing this up? We have plans, we have a good plan! What's wrong with our plan God?". He was preparing us.  The adoption didn't happen obviously but Chris and I couldn't help but wonder what He wanted us to do. So we prayed.

So last week, Chris asked me to check with our agency to see what the status was for Ethiopia. We were extremely worried about the waiting period and we determined that we needed a plan "B". "I know you've always said that you don't want to do a domestic adoption Danielle, but why don't you do some research and just see what's out there". I didn't know where to start but I assured him that I'd see what I could find and get back with him so we could really figure out what we needed to do. The next day I found An Open Door Adoption Agency based out of Georgia from an adoption update email I had received. I scrolled through their African American infant program guidelines and sent over the information to Chris. He asked me to email the director and the next weekend we started filling out our application.

Such a different program than what we were expecting. The birth mothers choose us to adopt their baby, such an amazing feeling that someone "chooses" us just as I was "chosen". We'll get to travel to pick up our daughter with our three sons as well as be in contact with her birth mother. THIS is what God was preparing me for. We feel like we know what we're doing and have such a sense of peace about how we're completing our family. All of the questions, baggage, tears, more questions and balancing brought us here...to be the parent our daughter needs us to be.

At dinner the other week, my oldest was asking me what his sister's name was. I told him that she didn't have a name yet and he looked at me as if I had turned into a monster. "She's gotta have a name mom!", he screamed at my younger son. "Let's name her Lilly", he said. "Lilly-Grace!" James screamed. I like it...it's got my vote.