Fear

This entire process has brought me a lot up ups and downs, but also a lot of loops and twists when it comes to my emotions.

At times I'm so happy about what we're doing and so terribly excited for the day that I'll get to meet my other son for the first time.  For when he calls me mom for the first time.  For when he begins to consider MaKenzie and Liam his siblings.

But then there are also a lot of times when I feel terrified.  When I read on adoption website forums about how people who adopted older children bit off more than they could chew.  About how terribly bad it went.  When I see so many hateful and angry comments about white people adopting black children.  When I think about how hard this transition is going to be for him.

There are times I start to question everything.

When I'm afraid this is too big for our family.  For me.  When I wonder if I'm adult enough to handle all the hardships that are going to come.

But what it boils down to is faith and love.

I've always said that I think each woman is born with a certain amount of mothering in them.  And I've always said I wasn't born with a whole lot of it.  That's part of the reason why, for years, I thought we would only ever have two kids.

But then that dream happened, and a dozen other little things happened and suddenly I felt like that mothering place inside of me grew a little bit.  Which shocked me.  And I just knew.

It's not about race or saving some kid.  It's about family.

And that keeps me going through the fear and the doubts.

Thank you for listening, my friend

I debated sharing this or not, but in the end I decided I didn't want to forget this experience.

A few months back I went to sleep, and I had another dream.  This one was incredibly simple.  I was in some house, talking to two of my friends about all of the adoption stuff.  One of these friends knew quite a bit about what was going on, the other knew hardly anything about it.

That was all there was to the dream.  Just the three of us talking about the adoption.

But I woke up with this crazy strong...need...urgency...to talk to one of those two friends from the dream.  Like, direly needed to talk to her.  I woke up from this dream in the middle of the night, that's how strong the feeling was, and it didn't go away for about an hour.  I honestly debated texting her right there in the middle of the night.  But that's crazy.

Anyway, I finally fell back asleep and woke up in the morning and still had this really strong feeling that I needed to talk to her about the adoption.

Which made NO sense to me.  See me and this friend are certainly friends, but we weren't super close by any means.  I'd only known her for just over a year because she moved in just down the street.  And we really hadn't talked about the adoption stuff yet.

But I just couldn't shake this feeling that I needed to talk to her.  I told Justin about it later that afternoon and of course he immediately said, "well, what are you waiting for, go talk to her."  But I was all, "why?  Why would I feel so strongly that I need to talk to her?  Why so specific?"

So, I sat on this for a day or two, not sure why the heck I was feeling like this, or why her, or how I was supposed to just bring all of this up.  So in the end, I took the simpler way.  I texted her and invited her family over for dinner.

Our kids get along great.  So this wasn't a big deal.  They all played and ate pizza and had a good time.  And our two families had been together plenty in social settings but usually with the whole group from our neighborhood.  So this wasn't that odd of an invitation.

Thankfully the adoption stuff came up naturally and us two couples ended up talking about it for a really long time.  And this friend of mine, she was so genuinely interested in it all.

Over the last few months, she's continued to ask me how things are progressing every time she sees me.  She asks about the kids.  And what's to come.  And how it will all work.

And to my great surprise, she's become the person most invested and interested in everything in my small circle of people who know we're going through this.  She's been even more caring about it all than most people in our family.  I feel like a lot of the friends and family have simply forgotten that our family is going through this huge, mostly blind search that is forever going to change so many dynamics of our family.  Sometimes it feels like some of them don't really care, or don't really believe that we're actually going to do this.  And I can just feel it, she, this friend, really does care about this situation and is so supportive of us growing our family this way.

I did not expect her to become my biggest cheerleader in this process.

The other day when we were talking about it all at an event, I left and had tears of appreciation in my eyes as I got in my car.  Because I just need to talk about this crazy search sometimes.  I just want someone to listen and see in their eyes that they're hearing me.  And she's there every time.

The other night I laid awake for quite some time, just thinking about it all, and I was just overcome with this overwhelming sense of gratitude for her support and friendship in this all.

I'm really glad I listened to that dream.  I'm so glad I acted on the prompting and didn't just brush it off as something silly and ignore it.  I'm grateful that our friendship has become so much more because of this.

I'm really grateful for you, my friend.  Thank you, so much.  It has meant everything to me.

Now What?

I'm afraid I don't have much of an update.

Over the past few weeks we've been weeded out that we were not an option for one child or another because either A) we don't live in the same state as the child or B) we have two younger kids.

Which I understand.

We have a list of "favorites" on the AdoptUSKids website.  You have no idea how much I HATE that they named it a "favorites" list.  Why not potential matches?  Or something like that, you know?  Favorites.  Psh.

Anyway, several of the kids on our list that we haven't inquired on yet have been placed.  I'm so happy for them.  Another child is going to a loving family.

Over the last week or so I keep reviewing all those children on the list, potential matches, wanting to inquire on more kids since we only have a few home studies out there currently, but I just don't feel strongly about what's left right now.  I feel...bleh about where the process is at right now.  Things are kind of stagnant.

I can only imagine what it is like for those parents hoping to adopt newborns who end up waiting YEARS to meet their future child.  Our family has only been really on the search since the end of December, not quite 3 months, and I'm frustrated.

But.  But.  I know this will all fall into place when it's supposed to happen.  I'm not going to stop checking the websites every day, but I think that as the time draws closer for our family to head back to WA for the spring and summer, the search will take a little bit of a backseat.

And we will find our son when the time is right.