Friday Night Thankfulness

Tonight I have been sitting at the computer with a lot on my mind and heart. Dan is working midnights this week, and the kids were in bed pretty early. (Agape earned herself a 6:30 bedtime today... fun, fun.) This has given me some RARE time to really reflect while perusing facebook. Not much was going on tonight... I suppose most people fall into either one of two catagories: 1. out having a life and therefore too busy with fun and excitement to post or pin or comment or 2. at home doing pretty much nothing, so don’t have anything really interesting to post about... but wishing someone else did so you could live vicariously through them! LOL Tonight I fall into catagory 2. I have often been in catagory 1, so I am not really complaining, just making an observation.

But my quiet time tonight has been good for my soul. I rarely get this. So I actually decided to forgo the chores and check up on some old adoption blogs and profiles of families who I know are still fighting the good fight to bring their children home, or, sadly, have lost the battle and will not be bringing any little African beauties into their homes. Regardless of the details and reasons for these outcomes and long waits, it is heartbreaking. EVERY. SINGLE. CASE. These are beautiful people filled with the LOVE OF GOD for the fatherless, experiencing real life-altering heartbreak. These are precious children who are not yet home with a family who loves them and wants to give them a future.

As my eyes have brimmed with tears for those families and my soul has called on the Lord of Mercy on their behalf, I have also been brimming with thankfulness.

As hard as the past few weeks have been, as much as Agape has been sucking the metaphorical-emotional life out of us lately, as much as we have very real concerns for our daughter and have many things weighing on our hearts in respect to her, WE HAVE HER. She is HERE, and she is OURS. Oh, how miraculous that is! I don;t want to lose sight of the blessing even on the hard days. ESPECIALLY on the hard days! She may be driving me nuts or even bringing me to tears, but the reality is that we have the unique, ridiculously amazing, and life-changing opportunity to be her parents, and we would not have it any other way!

Tonight I was talking to my mom on the phone about the events of this past week and some of the “fun” that led up to the early bedtime tonight, and she made the comment, “I’m sorry Jen, I know you probably never expected it to be like this...” 

Well, that caught me off guard, and just did not sound right to me... and I realized that it really wasn’t true. Sure, we did not know exactly what our daughter was going to be like. Adoption is something that you never fully understand until you are smack dab in the middle DOING it. But the TRUTH is that - thanks to gazillions of books, blogs, support groups, and madatory education requirements for our agency and homestudy - we were prepared for almost every worst case scenario possible. Agape could have truned out to be an axe murdering psychopath, and we were ready to get her the help she would have needed while continuing to love her through it. No lie! Last year at this time I remember wondering things like, “Will I be able to leave her alone when I am in the shower? Might she be a danger to herself or Justice if left alone? Will we have to lock up the knives? Can we trust her not to steal and stash all of our money when we are not guarding our wallets or savings jars? Could she be capable of truly, intentionally hurting or being cruel to one of our family’s pets? Would she ever be cruel to Justice intentionally or hate him? Might I be cleaning poop smeared all over the walls at this time next year?” All of these and more... And each one of these concerns was birthed from another family’s REAL adoption story where their child had some serious issues to work through.

So, in respect to all that COULD be going on, I would say that things are actually BETTER than I “expected” in a way, because half of me was prepared for the worst case scenario!

Instead of a danger, our daughter is a caring, sensitive sister who LOVES Justice, is kind of scared of the cats (Honestly! She thinks Emily is going to eat her in her sleep! LOL), has not demonstrated any problem with stealing (*yet*), and seems to appreciate poop only for its comedic value (oh, how Justice’s poop faces make her LAUGH hysterically)! Those are all qualities that we are thankful to have found in her. And so our worst case scanarios have not proven true.

Instead we have attachment regression, incontinence issues, disobedience, control seeking, and a desprate need for attention from others, etc. All these are intertwined and related in her psyche in ways that we do not even fully understand yet. But from what we have researched, all pretty standard fare in the “older child” “child from hard places” world. Some issues are more intense than others, and some DAYS are worse than others... and some things grate on and hurt Dan and I more deeply than others. But we have no fears for anyone’s safety, and we do know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she loves us... although it is based on whatever limeted concept she has of love right now, she loves us. And we love her. 

Our concept of love, we have found, has quite a bit more stretching and deepening to do too. So God is working on all of us.

All that being said, my heart is HEAVY for those waiting for/missing their children. We pray and ache for you and for the kids! And my heart is also thankful to God that even on my most emotionally exhausted day I actually have the opportunity to be exhausted... because it means that my daughter is HOME. I DO NOT EVER WANT TO TAKE THAT FOR GRANTED. And right now I have the chance to be the biggest influence in her life for a few short years, and so by golly, I am going to do my best by her!

And on that note, its time for me to go upstairs now and wake her up for the 2nd time since she went to bed to have her get up and go to the bathroom. Then again at 3am. It’s not fun, but she’s worth it. And MAYBE... maybe tomorrow the sheets will be dry. And maybe tomorrow we won’t have to mandate an early bedtime. And maybe tomorrow will be a good day where my daughter allows herself to trust our love and follow our lead and let her guard down.

But if not, we’ll try again the next day. And thank GOD for the chance to do so!