In recent conversations with friends, my hubby and through the overwhelming response I have received from this post, I am learning that while our circumstances and stories are all very different, we all went into the process believing and hoping for the same ending results. When you add a child to your family, you think of that child loving you as much as you love them in return. Adopting families seek out, pursue and dream of their child-to-be, already full of a love that most outsiders cannot understand. That hefty pile of paperwork and home study might just look like "paper" to the outsider, but to an adopting family, it represents a child and a dream that is growing in our hearts with each cross of a T, dot of an "i" and fingerprint smudge. We love them before we even know their faces ... and truthfully, we also have expectations for them and the place they will fill in our lives, even before we know their names.
There is one problem. They don't have the same dream!
Then ... they come home. Then ... life begins. Then ... we are crushed, disheartened and frustrated. Life begins and the "hard" of the adoption process becomes real. We begin to realize, often, that our children don't appreciate us, don't want or don't know how to love us and they fail every. single. expectation we had set for them.
We grieve the loss of our dream. With all the "hard" of the adoption process, the hardest part is the one we secretly would never ever share ... they don't live up to what we had imagined. This doesn't "feel" or "look" like we thought it would. You might be thinking we were ill prepared. We weren't. You might be thinking, we went in with rose colored glasses - perhaps. But what we did do is - we read, studied and learned and took all the classes we could about all that "attachment stuff" and "adoption parenting". It was only after we got home did we realize that some things just can't be taught. There is one thing missing in all that "education". The reality of the heart. Things only become personal and real when their is a cost. This time, the cost is our heart and that hurts. We set out with a dream and a desire to love and be loved. We learn all about what "behaviors" our children might come to us with prepared for the battle ahead - but no one ever tells you about the one place where the armor of education can't reach and protect - the heart. Truthfully, you can't teach hurt and you can't "teach" what the heart will feel in the process of redemption.
In our own grief and struggle over a lost dream, we often fail to remember that our children are grieving something even greater ... the loss of a family! As much as we might want to turn our heads, our "blessing" of adoption was the result of our child's greatest tragedy!
Maybe the problem isn't our kids .... maybe it's time we re-set OUR expectations for them!
As I stood visiting with a new friend on Easter, we immediately began conversing over the one thing that was very obvious we had in common - adoption. Her son, who came to her at birth, was a beautiful little 3.5 year old little boy. She swooned over him and gushed in the amount of love she had for her son. In our conversation, she shared that they were in the process to add more children to their family ... this time, through the foster/adoption system. She shared her one fear of that process... That "these kids will remember their families and I don't know if I can handle sharing the role of Mommy". That's what she said ... but this is what she really meant
... "I'm scared they won't love me the way I need (or expect) them to love me".
This precious woman also began to share that her first born was adopted at "birth" and therefore, "she didn't have any of these concerns with him because we are the only family he will ever remember.
That's when it really hit me! That's when the truth of all of this stared at me right before my eyes. In those moments, the Lord used that new friend to speak to my heart and I believe, for me to speak to hers.
This is my message to her heart:
Didn't you say you wanted more than one child? If that is the case, then you are believing that the Lord has given you enough room in your heart to love more than one child.
The same is true of our children. I believe, the Lord can give them enough room in their hearts for more than one Mommy. Whether their story and that Mommy is a good, bad, or an ugly one ... that is their Mommy. We cannot and should not ever want to take that away from our child. In fact, our children should not only be given permission but encouraged to love them! That Momma, gave them life! Whether adopted at birth or at 10 ... that sweet Momma is very much a part of their story! If we fail to recognize how important this is ... then we fail to love them in the fullness of who they are!
And this is what the Lord spoke into MY heart.
He used her worries and fears of rejection to show me that where I was struggling most ... was with my own rejection. I had, unknowingly set expectations for Z that he could not and would not ever fulfill. Oh, for sure, he is struggling and acting out all sorts of attachment behaviors (expected). But the truth is, while some of those behaviors are
unrealistic expectations = my rejection = my broken heart = me building up walls to not get hurt more = me not attaching to Z = him not attaching to me.
Remember that "Attachment Dance" ... I now know who is leading.
The expectations of my heart! I'm re-setting my expectations in hopes that we can move from dancing with two left feet, into a Waltz that finds a newer and smoother rhythm.
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