Yearning...

First of all, I want to say that, yes, we are still here. Daddy purchased a new camera for me to use, so hopefully there will be more pictures to see soon. Soccer kept us busy - younger daughter's team won the championship.

Kids are in classes 3 days a week, 2 for Classical Conversations, one for a co-op and there's Homeschool PE twice a week. Busy.

I don't know if there is anyone who hopes to read anymore, and I don't know what they want to know (except that Desi wants PHOTOS) so my post may not be audience sensitive. I need to process emotionally somewhere safe and benign... so this empty room seems to be good.

I was going to entitle the post "Baby Fever", but figured that it would leave too much open for people to assume crazy things.

Here's a picture of my baby:


Well, no - that's my first child. These are my babies...
Sigh. They aren't. Some of you use that terminology, but you can all see those pictures up there. Two of them wear adult size clothing and even the smallest one has clothing picked up in the boys' section of the store, not infants and toddlers.

We're getting more intense in our wishing and hoping, again. I realize it's cyclical, it waxes and wanes. When we were first married (senior year of college) we didn't want to be pregnant just yet. Starting a new job, that was okay to settle into without a pregnancy.

By the time we had settled into the jobs and I had received a job offer to work in Children's Ministry at MO, well we were ready. That was what... 2002? Yes. 2002. The Caseys had Emma, and they shared her with us freely, but most of our other peers were still childless. Loving, godly, Christian people at church tried to tease us that we shouldn't make the decision to wait for children, I'd try to think how to tell them that we were not the ones who had made that decision...

Public service announcements: Jokes about babies, conception and "waiting to have children" are not funny to people struggling with infertility. For that matter jokes about "incentives" to increase your family might not be either. We can be pretty touchy depending how badly we are yearning, but we might not know how to tell you politely because we love you and we know you are not trying to be malicious in the least. So public service announcement - if you don't know... tread lightly with your jokes.

By 2003 the Baby Yearning (for Daddy it was a child yearning, he has not strong desires for newborns, but at that point we wanted something to nurture. We completed our first adoption application in March, after Daddy's birthday. We were detoured. Then detoured again. And again. Meanwhile, close friends and relatives were being infected with the illness all around us. I think at the height of it there were 7 people who were pregnant (a cousin, 3 at church, 3 college friends) and more in the general public and acquaintances. We were going crazy. After more detours, we acquired substitute objects for nurturing: Kawaii and Sora Mimi, our black cats. Lily the cat had already died and we knew that we would be mentally unstable if Daisy died and we were left without something to nurture.
Here we are. At foster parenting class in Fall 2003. God had obviously led us there, and we are smiling because the trainer keeps saying tantalizing things like "We almost had to place a baby with one of you this last week because we were having trouble finding a placement."

Jealousy was definitely a factor. Each time the yearning reaches fever pitch that's a danger, but God is there, trying to teach me something if I will chose to listen. I think the story at that point was to realize that He was in control.

So then 2004, younger son is placed in our home, but he is not adoptable. We apply for other children in care, but we have no other placements and our mailed out homestudies bring back nothing.

2005, he is adoptable but they think we might not be the right choice (something about making judgments about us based on skin tone and hair color.... isn't that discrimination?) We fear that they will place him in another home, and wonder how long this process will take and if we will ever have 2 children. (Because we're greedy people who want more than one, you know?)

2006 - he is adoptable, and is adoptable by us. Some hurdles to jump over... well the social worker had to do the running and jumping for us, while we waited in nervous anticipation. We also knew, with the end in sight, that we were going to start adoption #2 asap and we were going to do it internationally (because I was definitely old enough now - March 2003 I wasn't 25 yet... that's the magic age for many countries). God led us to Ethiopia. We started researching and God set apart our children. I wanted a baby, something small and snuggly and beautiful, but God has better plans. So I had the baby yearning, but God said "My ways are better." He also pointed out Proverbs 3:27-28. Several times.

2007 - In less than 1/2 the time for our first adoption, our second adoption is completed and we have 4 children. Those first months are too intense for much yearning except for sleep, peace, quiet, happiness and people to understand the language you are speaking. And for things to stop being broken, hidden and written on. And... No, I'll stop. I had a pregnant sister-in-law on each side of the family that year. We looked into foster parenting in 08 (the social worker came toour house and told us to wait a few months =) ) and went to a domestic infant adoption meeting at Bethany in the fall of 08 I guess, so obviously we were wishing for a baby of some sort (because we aren't going to sign up for disrupting birth order again out of our own wisdom - about 1/2 of the early drama stemmed straight from that).

2009 - there was a point where I was almost filling out paperwork to work with CHASK (they work with finding families who are interested in special needs kids - and although those words kept us away from India and Hong Kong in 2003, by 2007 we had 4 children that qualified by age or medical condition as a special needs adoption... so those words weren't as scary anymore). I was almost ready to fill it out with my husband's blessing. Then we realized that we didn't really have any resources to pay for the homestudy and legal fees, so we stopped.

I guess I never really did stop wanting the next baby. My plan from young child on was to always have a "current" baby in the house until I was grandmothered. That's not the way God needed to refine me. It's interesting the friends I have now who are on that path... but had no intention of walking that path 15 years ago. God needed them on my dream path and I'm on a different one. For His glory.

Other things He has taught me- Babies are a gift. Gifts don't have to be earned or deserved, they are priceless, and He has given us ALL a baby. One baby, the most precious of them all. He gave human kind HIS baby to take care of. And I keep coming back to that truth, that even if the only baby God ever gave someone was the fact that "He so loved the world that He gave His one and Only Son" (Jn 3:16) that would be enough. My feelings often do not line up with that, but it is true. He's also working on me to cherish what I have and reminding me that people older than me are still allowed to parent infants (the window is not closed - and I'm not just talking Sarah in the Bible, I'm talking non-miraculous conceptions). That this is for His glory and my perfection.

I really, really, really like babies. I wish I could have one to care for. But then I realize that unless I figure out how to ovulate I need to pass a homestudy and I have a bit of work to do to be ready for that, I have some work to do. So I'm trying to channel that yearning. My husband banned me from thinking about babies a few months ago... but the size 6 clothing and 13 shoes are making him yearn too.

I suppose I'm done. The moral of this story is "Tread carefully" Our nerve endings regarding little children are a bit raw at the moment... looking at my chronology they seem that they have been since about 2002, except for that period of time when we had a baby in the house... except that there was this fear that he'd leave - so they were always raw then as well. Don't promote me to some other peer group yet... the peer group of "youngest child is in elem. school" I can't take it. Sign me up for nursery duty or some place that I can cuddle someone. And Pray that God's will be done and His glory is served, no matter what else is next. (But seriously... there are babies in orphanages in this world... that can't mean that there's a shortage? I mean... can't we have just one?)

Yeah. Pray for our mental health =) In checking out a date for the timeline I found an email. I told my SIL that if I had been married for 8 years w/o a child I would have been a raving lunatic. So I'm going to go clean part of my house. I'm trying to channel the emotion into a productive goal. And trying to channel it into loving less cuddly, more critical types of children who still need a Mommy.

God bless. And if you have a baby in your house, or ever had a baby in your house - give them a good snuggle and a kiss and REMEMBER - they are a gift and a blessing - no matter how it may look at the moment.

Post -anything depression

I am starting out with some photos of my beautiful family since some of you haven't seen us in months. I just have been so busy parenting and trying to take care of life that sitting down to blog hasn't even been on the "to do" list.

We have been busy with Classical Conversations with our homeschooling, learning, growing, trying to figure out how to organize our house and visit our family and develop deeper relationships with our friends.

Our family is learning and growing but I realize that we have a lot of post-even depression.

People have heard of postnatal depression, we all know of the grief after the loss of a loved one, and many in the adoption field have heard of post-adoption depression.

If you would have asked me during this process I wouldn't have identified myself as depressed during the first year of the children home. I had a hard time after Grandpa died, but that is understandable.

Lately I have come to the conclusion that stress, loss and grief takes many different forms and causes many reactions, all very different from person to person. Loss and grief can be about unexpected things and appear in unexpected ways.

For some of the kids the grief is that I'm not like their other mother figure, or little cultural things here and there over and over that they miss. The fact that we insist that they learn our way of doing certain things in the house when they feel like their old way was quite good.

Around here the most common reaction to grief and loss is anger.

Although many times we are complimented on how happy the children seem when out in public, and they are happy in many ways, at home we see a lot of anger. When we're out of the house the things they grieve are not so much in the forefront of their mind and experiences - they can concentrate on other things which aren't so intimately entwined in things related to family relationships.

I should have figured it out sooner, but I now realize that I've been having my own tantrums for many of the same reasons. I am angry at some of the things I have lost. I never for a moment want to stop being my children's mother - but I miss things.

I mourn for the days:
When my house was a place where no one was hit.
When people didn't yell at each other at my house.
Where if I had to spend my time with people who were being spiteful, mean and miserable I could go home and feel better.
Where my choices and actions weren't constantly criticized and used as excuses for bad behavior.
When I had time and emotional energy available to really pay attention to my husband and when he had the same for me in the evenings
For that matter - time to just talk to each other and be heard and understood by each other.
When I could deal with adolescent fluctuations with dignity and grace.
When my husband and I didn't have to disagree about things like telelvision and DS usge.
I didn't lay in bed with my stomach in a knot worrying that someone was going to treat me spiteful and mean before I even got to breakfast.
When I could formulate a sentence and most people understood what I was saying instead of the times where nothing I say seems to make sense to those around me and/or they tell me that what I said was the reason why they did something atrocious.

I guess I never envisioned so much strife in my own household. I mourn the change in my relationship with my husband and the fact that my children are angry at each other and at me on a regular basis. Some of it is normal, but part of me just screams and stamps my feet (and I am childish enough that sometimes that is literal...) when my hopes and dreams are crushed in little every day ways... like finding bills and trash smooshed into a plastic bag and shoved on a bookshelf. Or finding out that a child kicked a smaller child HARD instead of asking me for help. Or for when I could turn to my spouse for help or a listening ear and he wasn't worn out so thin that he could give it to me.


Now that I realize what it is I'm so angry about, I hope I can come to terms with it. Mourn it if I have to. Acknowledge that some of those things are part of my pre-older-child-adoption life. That some of the things would have been inevitable with any type of parenting. And then I need to pray about what God wants to see in my family and start working on the new, which will be beautiful and good in it's own way.