The disconnect

Last week I read Laura’s post and started to leave a comment and basically hi-jacked the post, so I decided to instead write a post of my own, and expand on it a little.
I recently had another interaction with an adoptive family that gave me pause….
it seems like there is a disconnect between adopted child” “bio child” and just “child”

This family, also met at a park, was talking about their son who had been adopted from Korea.  He has been home for 20 months or so.  They were sharing with me their experience of having early intervention come into their home to help with their son’s speech delays.  I was talking about how every once in a while, I feel like we should have some sort of evaluation for Khai, just because, but then I realize that I don’t really think he has any issues(as far as occupational/physical/speech delays).  He is somewhat slower in speech than my other two, but he walked at about a month before either one of them did….

Anyhow, she burst out with,”well, since we brought him into our family, we need to give him all the opportunities that we would give our other(bio) children.”

And it made me really uncomfortable.  To say that just seems like having to put words to the obvious.  Having to justify something that needs no justification.

I think that for me, and many of my on-line buddies “adopted child” and “bio child” are necessary terms that describe how our children came into our families.  Many times both terms carry with them complex situations, on-going need for evaluation, thoughts that, for our Vietnamese a-kids, include the climate of Vietnamese adoptions at the time of their adoption.  These terms describe where/how children come to our family.  The terms bring along with them many assumptions, some true, some not. 

What these terms do not describe is our relationship to/with our children.  We do not continue to relate to our child as “our adopted child” and in my case “my bio kids”.  Of course Khai’s being adopted brings in many many issues/concerns/joys/opportunities that I do not have with my bio kids and vice versa- but those thing do not define my relationship with my bio kids or with Khai.  They are a part of it, but not all of it. 

If I continue to define my relationship with Khai based on how he came into my family, I will have a disconnect in my mind/heart when it comes to relating with him.

While this is where I am at now, I feel obligated to say that I started this journey at a MUCH different place.  I DID believe I was “saving a baby”.  I believed that I was part of the solution to the worldwide problem of fatherless/motherless children.  Ah, life.

There has been MUCH that has changed my perspective over the past 4 years, some of it personal tradegy, but a lot of my change in thinking has come through education; specifically through blogging.  I still remember the first post I read of my bloggy friend over 2 years ago now.  I started reading Mrs. Broccoli Guy because she had a catchy name and I found her blog from either Nicki or Kelly because I “met” Kelly & Nicki on the boards.  Met may not be the right term for lurking and reading other people’s posts….

The part no one wants to talk about was one of the first posts that really articulated for me some of the fears/concerns that were floating around in my head, but that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.  While we were searching for an agency, we knew enough to look for an agency that had a posture of finding families for children, not the other way around.  But that was about it.

When I started to realize 3-4 years ago just how much corruption there was in the world of international adoption, my perspective began to change.  This past winter when the report came out from the embassy about corruption, it really put things into a clear focus for me.  It is impossible to continue in any sort of messiah complex about adoption when you very well could have contributed to the reason there are so many children that need homes.

When we pull back our focus slightly, we realize that if adoption is about “saving babies”, it is at best a very ineffective way to go about it.  When we look at the problems in the world that cause familes to be unable to raise their children, we have to admit, at least in part, that we, as Americans/westerners have some responsibility by simply living in our culture and participating in many of the advantages that come at the cost of people living half-way around the world.  Before I get beat up for being a hypocrite or anti-American, OR anti-adoption, my point is only to say that adoption is not and cannot be about saving babies.  It is not an act of charity.  I believe that having children is a selfish desire, however they come into your family.  Raising children, on the other hand, is a daily exercise in selflessness.

As a Christian, I believe that I am called to care for the orphan, widow and fatherless.  This is made clear through out both the Old and New Testament.  The Bible also makes clear that adoption is a valid way to build families, and that it is in fact ordained by God(God’s own son was adopted by Joseph) just as having bio kids is.  Where I think as Christians we can go wrong is when we combine the two.

The disconnect comes when people, whether other a-parents or just the general public, view children who were adopted as recipients of charity.  Those of us who have been forced to be honest with ourselves and the world around realize not only how false this assumption is, but dangerous to us AND our children.

Great interview

Brianna at Just Showing Up has up a link to an awesome interview by Tricia Tibbets.  The interview is between Chuck Colson, Greg Boyd, and Shane Claiborne.

These 3 men probably represent the extremes of  Evangelical Christianity in terms of “liberal” vs. “conservative”. 

Man, this interview was powerful.  Rather than a debate, it was an excercise in moving together while walking in ambiguity and shades of gray in terms of religion and politics.

It’s pretty long(90 mins).  I went to watch it assuming I would watch a couple soundbites and move on.  I got completely sucked in and sat mezmerized for the whole interview.

If religion and politics interest you, or even witnessing an exercise in respectful dialog about issues that are typically utterly polarizing, check out this interview, called Three Degrees of Separation.

you really wear me out

but I love you anyway… says Olivia’s mommy…

We are big fan’s of the Olivia books, we read them ALOT and the kids love them and I love them cause they are well written, and just a tad snarky in a VERY NICE WAY.

All that to say that I am often finding myself saying that exact thing to my own kiddos.  “you guys are really wearing me out.”  To which we often follow up with, “but I love you anyway.”  Usually this statement(or its well worn sister, “you guys are making me tired”) are preceded by a loud.heavy.sigh.

Yesterday the loud.heavy.sigh was utilized quite a bit. 

After one such sigh, Samuel asks, “Mommy are we making you tired?” 

“yes, buddy you are.”  I replied. 

To which Samuel had the snort-laughter inducing rejoinder,”I’m making myself tired too.”

 

To top it all off, I thought I would share with you all some picture evidence of what the boys presented me with right after I got out of the shower this morning.Just in case you can’t tell, Samuel very helpfully painted his toenails, fingernails and Khai’s toenails and fingernails, gorgeous and fabulous, AND Bailey’s carpet… not so much gorgeous and fabulous…

I snapped pics before they got time-outs….

Protected: we’re baaaaaaack

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I am still here and alive…

Just in case anyone was worried…

 

We are moving in 5 weeks, I have been on a blog fast in order to help myself complete a section of a Bible study I am doing, we are going to the shore for a couple of days with dh’s family, I am training for a half marathon in Sept(some of you long-time readers may recall that I tried to do this last year, here I go again…) I am also continually working on quality time with the kids, discipline and focused time with each one….

Life has just generally been crazy…

But I have several blog posts kickin’ around in my head…. Laurie’s great post last week has given me much to think about, as well as a comment over at VVAI… so, if I get around to it I look forward to some discussions….

Oatmeal in my hair.

So this morning I got out of bed, had my quiet time WITH a cup of coffee and took a shower all before the kids got up at 7ish.  I thought that I had gotten a jump on my day.  Ah, yes, it is always fun when I get ahead of myself like that.

Khai ate a very uneventful breakfast, which, by the way, is highly unusual.  He routinely throws all his food on the floor AND climbs up on the counter.  Lately I have been able to corellate these occurances with when I am in the basement checking blogsmy email.  So today there was no email checking while Khai was eating.  He finished breakfast with nary a Cheerio on the floor. 

So I ran downstairs to see if any of my fave blogs had news.  The five or so that I checked had not updated in the last 12 hours….I was about to reply to an email from the person who is in charge of the Sunday School class I help with(which was a very overdue reply) when Bailey starts to scream/cry because she chopped off her hand and it was bleeding everywhere.  No, wait, that is only what I thought had happened based on the volume and intensity of the crying/screaming.  In reality, she spilled her milk on her lap.  Clearly, Bailey and I have differing understanding on what constitutes the end of the world.

 

So off the the bath goes Bailey.  It was also the end of the world because her camisole was not tight enough….that is a whole other story, but it added to the drama that was this morning.  While I am quickly trying to get Bailey bathed(because, I am quite sure you all remember, this was The House Inspection Morning).  Samuel runs into the bathroom, very sure that he, too is taking a bath, “Not so fast,” I say…(ok, so I didn’t actually say that)and I took him back out to finish his oatmeal while I cleaned up the milk on the floor.  He was not happy, and was letting me know, again, with intesity and volume.  I should have known that kneeling down to clean up a bowlful of spilled milk in NOT a good idea when one is right besides one’s very angry son.  He threw his milk cup, the proceeded to hit me on my head with his bowl of oatmeal.  A full bowl, a full glass bowl. 

Now I am mad.  There is oatmeal and milk on the floor, and my head is throbbing.  I talk to myself in my head, forcefully reminding myself that I am the adult, I can control my emotions and actions, and take my son up to his room.  This is all occurring while Bailey is crying that there is not enough water in the bath. 

I get Bailey out of the bath.  It is now 8:45.  The inspector is coming at 9:30.  I take her up to her room, along with Khai to get her dressed.  None of her tight-fitting camisoles are clean(she HAS to wear a camisole EVERY SINGLE DAY, they have to be a certain kind that fit a certian way…..) so I rush back downstairs to put the white laundry into the dryer to try to get a camisole dry before we need to leave.  Samuel is now out of time out/quiet time.  I am no longer furious.  9:00.  Ok, I have 15 minutes to go….I can do this…..

Samuel gets his clothes on.  Baiely is hanging out in her undies…..I take Khai up to the Kitchen to change his diaper…9:05… There are no wipes in the diaper bag.  His diaper is poopy. Very, very poopy.  I run upstairs to get wipes.  I run downstairs, only to see the INSPECTORS VAN outside the very open front door…..$&%^%^%$^%!!!!!!!!

I come around the corner to see my n@kedpoopy son escaping out the back door!!!!!!!

This is all while Bailey is still only in her undies…..

AND IT IS ONLY 9:10!!!!!!!!!!

OH. MY. GOSH.

I call my IRL BFF and tell her we are coming over.  I put a damp cami on Bailey.  She somehow does not complain.  I wipe Khai’s poopy hiney and legs(because of course he squat and got his leg and heel in his hiney). and got an outfit on him. 

We got to BFF’s house.  I calm down.  We go to W@l-mart.  It is not horrible, despite all of my fears that it will be.

We come home 2 1/2 hours later and HE. IS. STILL. HERE.  I am beyond annoyed at this point.  So I lied to the inspector guy.  He asked me if we got permits for the kitchen remodel, I tell him I don’t know, I could call my husband and ask.  He knows I am lying, in our state you have to put the permit in the window when you get one, for like, the whole time you are remodeling….Yeah, I didn’t notice if we did that…..

And, the really stupid thing is, after I called my husband and confessed my lying(for which I do feel guilty, but seriously, he was here forever and I shouldn’t have even been here when he asked me!!!!!)  Sheldon told me that WE DIDN’T EVEN NEED A PERMIT. 

I am a goober.  I still have a headache(from the oatmeal induced lump on my skull) and tonight we are going to a small circus.  Yes, a small circus.  I know, I know, the kids will love it….

This all after I told Sheldon just this weekend that I really think I am ready for #4.  To which my oh-so-wise husband replied, “oh yeah?”

Back from the beach

On Friday afternoonat 3:00, I had an inspiration.  So I called my husband and said, “Do you think there is anyone at your parents beach house this weekend?”  My in-laws own a home here, where we live, one at the beach 3 hours away, and one in Florida in Sarasota….I never really think about how ridiculous this is, but now that I write it down it makes them seem fabulously wealthy….ahem….

 

So my hubby called them and they said, “It’s open!”  So in a matter of 1.5 hours, we were packed and heading to the beach for a long memorial day weekend.  It was faulous.  Absolutely fabulous….

Perfect weather, tons of beach/pool time(the house is in a resort community that has,like, 6 pools, one of which is right on the beach…)

Seriously, it was such a blessing to have this weekend and we ate it up.

So we’re back, we have the home inspection tomorrow, so we have a couple little projects tonight…

5 days+13 showings+3 offfers=

SOLD!!!!

 

Yep, our house is sold.  We have a home inspection next Weds, and pending that goes as it should, we settle on June 27th.  The people buying our house are letting us rent back from them for the month of July, so we don’t have to pack our whole house and move in 5 weeks which is awesome!  But after that we are trying to figure out what to do until we can move into our new house….(Either end of Sept or end of Oct…..)

Yeah, so the housing market is CLEARLY not in a slump where we live…. actually our realtor was even a little taken a-back by how crazy our house was….He’s been telling us that where we live has been relatively unaffected by the mortgage crisis, but he wasn’t quite expecting the craziness that our house was. 

We are just grateful.  That’s it.  We are not trying to figure this one out, we are just going with it and we are grateful.  

Thanks God. 

Heavy Heart

I just read about this on Anita’s blog.  Please pray for the Chapman’s whose story, lives and ministry have touched so many lives.

Daughter of Christian music star killed by car

The Associated Press

Published: May 22, 2008

  E-Mail Article

NASHVILLE, Tenn.: The 5-year-old daughter of Grammy-winning Christian music star Steven Curtis Chapman was struck and killed Wednesday by a sport utility vehicle driven by her brother, authorities said.

The girl, Maria Sue, was hit in the driveway of the family’s home Wednesday afternoon by a Toyota Land Cruiser driven by her teenage brother, said Laura McPherson, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Highway Patrol.

The brother, whose name and exact age weren’t available, apparently did not see the girl, McPherson said. No charges are expected.

“It looks like a tragic accident,” she said.

Several family members witnessed the accident, which happened in Williamson County just south of Nashville. The girl died later at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, hospital spokeswoman Laurie Holloway said.

In a statement, Velvet Kelm, a publicist for Chapman, said Maria was the Chapmans’ youngest daughter.

Chapman, who is originally from Paducah, Ky., and his wife have promoted international adoption and have three daughters from China, including Maria. They also have three biological children.

The singer’s Web site says the couple was persuaded by their oldest daughter to adopt a girl from China. The experience led the family to adopt two more children and create Shaohannah’s Hope, a foundation and ministry to financially assist thousands of couples in adoption.

The Chapmans did missionary work at Chinese orphanages in 2006 and 2007, according to the Web site.

“After our first trip to China, my wife and I knew our lives were changing — our eyes and hearts were opening to how big God really is, and we have wanted to experience more of that,” Chapman says on the Web site.

“We’ve really wondered whether or not we should just go to China and stay there. But I don’t think so. I believe God is saying, ‘I want you to go, get your heart broken, your eyes opened, and then take this story back to the church in America and around the world.’”

The 45-year-old singer also has released a book about being a father titled “Cinderella: The Love of Daddy and his Princess.” He has won five Grammy awards and 54 Dove awards from the Gospel Music Association, according to Kelm.

–>

Waiting on pins and needles…

I know that’s what you all have been doing, waiting for me to do a follow-up post to this one….

 

So we went to the “L” Area Adoptive Families group this morning.  They had child care broken up into two groups, 0-2 and 3-5.  All my kiddos went right in and were very excited….The one thing that I was REALLY excited to see was that for the first time in his life, Khai, as a person of color, was in the majority!  My two white kiddos were in the minority….of course they did not notice this at all(or at least they didn’t mention it to me.)  The vast majority of the a-kids were from Guat… There were kids adopted from Russia, China, Guatemala, one family just got a referral from Korea, Philippines, and domestically adopted from the US. 

I am typically not great in new situations, and as you all know, I had my mind kind of made up as to what kind of a-parents “these people” were.  So, when I walked into the room to hear this conversation, “yes my son is from the Philippines, it took such and so long to get him home.  It is such a shame because they try to get them adopted in their own country first and it just adds so much time onto the wait.”  As the woman she was talking to was nodding her head understandingly.

Yeah, that was not good for changing my stereotype…I wanted to shout at her, “DON”T YOU REALIZE THAT STAYING IN THEIR “OWN” COUNTRY, POTENTIALLY BEING ADOPTED IN THEIR BIRTH CULTURE, IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HOW LONG YOU HAD TO WAIT!!!!  DON’T YOU REALIZE THAT THE PHILIPPINES IS ONE OF THE VERY BEST COUNTRY PROGRAMS IN THE WORLD AND THE KIDS BORN IN THE PHILIPPINES ARE BLESSED TO HAVE A GOVERNMENT THAT SO CLOSELY POLICES ITS PROGRAMS!!!!!!!”

Needless to say, none of that came out of my mouth.  I had a fleeting thought that perhaps alienating myself on the first day would not be the best way to lovingly share my views and how they have been shaped, and luckily for me, I went with the fleeting thought….

Today, on my first time there, neither one of the regular leaders could make it, so one lady kind of took charge of the meeting and asked us all to share what led us to adoption….  There were about 12 of us.  It took the whole 1.5 hours.  I was second to last, so I didn’t share too much.  About half of the families started the journey to adoption because of infertility.   There were 2 women in their late 40’s/early fifties that had already raised families who were both adopting from China(one was in process and one was home with their child).  That was really cool for me to see.  I Just really respect people who choose to adopt when most people their age are breathing a sigh of releif that they got their kids out of the house and “now they can do what they want”  ok, so that may be a whole nother post….

One woman had gone through my domestic adoption nightmare… like, she was the poster-woman for why NOT TO EVER EVER CONSIDER DOMESTIC ADOPTION.  Seriously, this woman told us through her tears, over a course of 5 years how they lost 3 babies that they thought they had, one they had brought home whose 1st mom changed her mind ten days before her rights were terminated, one who changed her mind while still in the hospital, and one while the baby was still in cradle care.  The most amazing thing was that through her tears, there was SUCH a genuine love and respect for the 1st moms.  This woman was not bitter at all, and that spoke to me soooooo much.  She does have a 4 year old daughter now….It was awful to listen to her story, every time she would start talking about the new potential child, you would think, “this has to be the one.”  And then it wasn’t…. THREE TIMES…..

But there were also two other people who shared very smooth domestic processes, so I totally realize that she just had a very traumatic experience that is not necessarily the norm…

There was one other mom like me, who adopted b/c she always knew she would, which was cool, even though she was the one nodding sympathetically when the Philippines lady was saying how “it just takes so long…..” 

I am not sure what I was hoping for, probably either a nightmare OR to find a kindred spirit who would become my best friend and have bio and adopted kids(preferably from Vietnam)….It was neither and I think that’s probably good(um, that means that you all are stuck being my kindred spirits)….