Friday, July 8, 2011

Honesty.

I don't mind answering questions :)


I think the main question is "why do you not want to adopt?"

Our decisions have been on a child by child basis. If I could adopt Sabrina TODAY or ANY DAY EVER I would. She has some medical issues (needs plastic surgery very badly where a very large tumor was removed) and some HUGE emotional issues and probably some learning disabilities - BUT NONE OF THAT MATTERS TO ME.

Not even a little. I love her and I want to be her mom, but I accept that God did not make me her mom.

My 2nd foster child was a boy named Kellen. Kellen has RAD. I didn't know anything about RAD until God educated me on it by reading Blog after Blog after Blog about parents struggling to parent children with RAD. I have a son and Kellen was very jealous of EVERYTHING having to do with my son and never wanted anything to do with my son. My husband and I will never do anything that we believe is not in the best interest of our son so we decided this would not work so we did not adopt Kellen even though he was legally free for adoption and we were first in line.

Next we were presented with a 2 year old boy who was available for adoption. They should have never even showed us his profile. They were using terms like "a little delayed" when they should have been using terms like "mildly/moderately mentally retarded". As we spent more and more time with him we saw more and more red flags and when it came down to it neither one of us "wanted" to adopt him. We LOVE our kids, and we loved this little boy, but not in that "I can't live without you way" and we didn't want to bring this boy into a family that wasn't in love with him. We weren't in love with him.

Sometimes I think that it is us over thinking things. That we may be talking ourselves out of blessings, but I am pretty sure that is my guilt talking. I know I would have never started fostering just to "just" foster. We started fostering with ONE thing in mind. Adoption. That is what we wanted. But, as time has gone by we see that we are not desperate to adopt. We are desperate to love our kids, for whatever time we have them. I love the time I have with my kids, but after loosing one that I wanted to adopt so badly and having to make many very hard decisions I have come to accept that I may only be able to care for these kids for a limited time and the more I do it the more I am ok with it.

I do think that some day we will adopt. There will be a child that is able to be adopted that we will WANT to adopt. That hasn't happened yet and I am learning to be ok with that. It isn't what I expected at all, but I love what God is doing in the mean time.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Every person has his/her own gifts and own path to walk. Adoption isn't a path for everyone. Fostering is another, albeit less publicized way, of caring for God's orphaned children. But that's not everyone's calling either. I guess, the bottom line is, we each need to know our own personal calling and live it.

Anonymous said...

So funny. We were a "foster ONLY family". We didn't want to adopt. We were clear that we had no interest in placements that were open to adoption. We wanted to live in service. To love and let go. To reunify families. To team with parents.

And yet... We're adopting our second placement. I can't imagine my world without him. He's perfect. He has a lot of attachment issues, etc. from his first two years with his first family. Still, he's perfect. God has a funny way of changing our hearts, huh?

Andrea said...

That's great. I think it's so hard to make a decision that's best for your family while you know what a child has been through. We had to let our second placement go early, thankfully her aunt (that was getting her) was already here for a visit. She just stayed an extra 2 weeks for the hearing. She was over the moon at getting her early. I was so thankful she didn't have to go to another home, I probably wouldn't have sent her. I felt so guilty because all I'd wanted was a girl. I have three sons and our first placement was a boy. She was our second, she was so hard. She only liked my husband and would just scream ALL DAY LONG until he got home. Our 3rd baby is here, he's a boy! He was instantly my child within hours. It's nice to know I'm not the only one! Thanks for sharing!

Helga said...

What is RAD?? I have tried googling it but I can't find a definition for it :(

MamaFoster said...

Helga, look up this link:


http://www.attachment.org/pages_what_is_rad.php