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Monday, February 18, 2013

The (Not So) Scary Birthparents


     Like I mentioned before, in our whole journey, nothing has had the impact on me that one little paragraph did.  Basically states “Just as a parent has the ability to love more than one child, so does a child have the capacity to love more than one set of parents”  What a joyful proclamation this is.  (I’m sure someone could insert some awesome Scripture here to back this up.  Any takers?).  What a view of openness in adoption this gives us.  Now understand every adoption journey is different, and for some openness is not the way their journey is meant to be.  Who knows if ours will continue to be, but for now this is part of our journey.

      Before God opened my heart to openness, I had decided it was not for us.  One of many reasons I felt drawn to international adoption was there was a less likely chance for birth parent involvement. I thought lack of a participating birthparent would make raising an adopted child easier, and would be a less threatening task.  I realize now how selfish that was.  It started with a few of our adoptive families who have both open and closed adoptions.  The discussion of birthparents honestly made me uncomfortable.  But when we changed to domestic adoption, I knew birthparents, on some level, would become a part of our journey.  Of course I was willing to send updates and pictures periodically but was not at ease with any communication back.  That started changing during our mandatory 2 day training.  Most of the first day was discussing birthparents and let me tell you, it is hard to dismiss someone’s feelings when you meet a birthmother and listen to her experience.  All of a sudden, the birthmother became a person.  A person with feelings and hope for their unborn child.  They have dreams for their child that they realize they can’t provide at this time, but that doesn’t make their hopes and dreams any less viable.  And the love, wow!  The love that is evidenced by a birthparent’s decision to choose life and an adoption plan for their child is so profound, it still just makes my heart full.  We left that training and I remember bursting into tears in the parking lot.  My husband (kind of sort of used to it at that point, sheesh what is wrong with me) asked what I was feeling.  I distinctly remember telling him “I think God is going to give us an awesome birthmother who wants an open adoption and we are going to fall in love with her”  and that scared me.   A little (OK fairly big) part of me was anxious and was rebelling saying “no, no, that’s not what I wanted “but He was whispering right back “I’m going to stretch your heart until it can’t possibly contain all the joy and love that I want to bless you with”.  So that day I grew a little more open to openness.  It grew a little more as I realized our family dynamics were extremely well adjusted in our familial and parenting relationships and I think our kids could adjust fairly easily to openness in our adoption.  So on our application we put we were willing to providing updates and were possibly open to more communication down the road.

     So I told you how the referral happened and then came the meeting.  I was so nervous I didn’t eat breakfast because I thought I might throw it up.  See I didn’t think anyone would pick us.  I thought there were a lot of strikes against us.  We both work so our children are in before and after school care, we didn’t struggle with infertility issues, we already have 3 children.  But they wanted to meet us so here we were.  Do I wear my hair up or down?  If it’s up I might look too rigid, if it’s down, it will drive me crazy and I will look too young.  What do I wear? I want to appear put together (but not high maintenance), young (but mature), worldy (but small town).  And if you know me and know that I spend around ten minutes getting ready for work, it makes knowing all that really laughable.  So we went to the meeting and they were late and not answering their phone, which made our worker nervous, which made me nervous.  Before we went in I just prayed the one thing I could.  I prayed that God would give me the words to say what they needed to hear, whatever that was.  Whether we were or weren’t the ones for them, I just prayed He would have us say whatever would help make it clear for them and give them peace to know for sure.  Then they were there, and they walked in.  Haha, awkward.  So we sat on opposite sides of the table and looked at each other.  (I can laugh now, but it was nervewracking).  Thank goodness for the facilitating skills of our adoption worker and their advocate (same agency, just different jobs).  So we got to talking and it was obvious pretty fast that everyone relaxed and it was just like a pleasant conversation with friends.  I didn’t feel the need to censor anything I said although I was aware of sensitive topics.  Soon it was time to go and we were saying goodbyes.  We walked out and my husband and I looked at each other and both said, “wow”.  We liked them as people, we liked them as parents.  It didn’t surprise me as much as I thought it would.  We walked away knowing whatever and whoever they chose, it would be OK and we were better for meeting them.   I was just happy someone liked our profile enough to meet us J.  But I thought there were shared values and a connection, so I dared to hope a little that they might pick us.

     Once again well beyond proper blog length I’m sure, I will end our story here for now.

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