Getting Our Soup On

I think I owe all of you an apology. I read through the last 2 blog posts and thought that, in retrospect, they seemed kind of negative. Sorry about that. Fortunately, we’re full of great news this week, so that should make up for it a little.

We had our soup supper on Saturday night at Westview Christian Church and everything was great. We ended up with around 100 people there and raised enough money to really help with our adoption costs. Combined with our savings and other fundraising projects we’ve done, we’re off to a really great start.

The entire evening was outstanding. We were pleased to have Warren and Brian from Calvary Christian Church (www.calvarychristian.net) with us all evening. Warren is an outstanding musician and performed several great songs for us, and Brian shared with us some very moving and inspirational words on adoption. We’re so fortunate to have great people like them who were willing to sacrifice their time to share their talents with us. We can’t thank you enough.

As great at things went, the day wasn’t without a few hiccups. There was, of course, Ashley’s insistence that only 5 or 6 people would show up and that we’d be left eating leftover soup for weeks. When the first wave of people started coming in though, we were hit with the more frightening thought of, “What if we run out of soup?” In the end though, the amount of food ended up being just fine. There were also the things we forgot at home. Fortunately, one of us was thinking ahead and made sure the car had plenty of gas to make the trip back to Salem to get what we needed. Although I didn’t plan on making 2 trips back to the house to get things we forgot, we still had plenty of gas so that wasn’t too much of a problem.

And sure, there were things that disappointed us a little. There were people who we expected to be there who didn’t show up. And as much as you know that things like that are going to happen, it never ceases to disappoint you just a little. Those small disappointments were quickly brushed away though by the overwhelming kindness of the people who came. For every person we expected to see and didn’t, there were more who we were pleasantly surprised to see. From people we haven’t seen in years to people we barely knew, they all came to support our efforts. It’s honestly so overwhelming to me that it’s hard to write about how much that means. We owe you all a debt that we can never repay. Thank you so much.

But there was one thing more than any other that disarmed any of the small disappointments or stresses that occurred in setting up this event. That was that this weekend made us feel like our child was closer to home. With every small progression in our adoption journey, whether it’s finishing some paperwork or adding to our savings, our child feels a little closer. We know he’s out there waiting for us and the work we put in this weekend was a big step toward getting him home. We know there will be many more steps and, sometimes, there will be setbacks. But celebrating the progress makes us feel like our child just got a little closer to home. Thank you all for helping our family take this step.

Book-A-Million! Well, minus a few

I've heard that life changes when you have kids. Everything that once would have seemed abnormal becomes standard. I think this starts to happen even before you have your child, because I'm noticing some changes already. For example, this weekend I had my first incident of "parent rage." It wasn't totally unfamiliar. I mean, I'm familiar with "road rage", "IU game referee rage", and "annoying people at Wal-Mart rage", but this is one of the first times I've ever been angry about something that directly relates to our child.

We went to Books-A-Million in Clarksville to look for an adoption book that we have to read for our agency. We were pretty sure they didn't have it and that we'd need to order it, but we wanted to check. We also figured that, since we had some time, we'd look around at what other adoption books they had both for children and for adoptive parents. After we found the section with parenting books, I started looking through the titles while Ashley went to the next section to look through the children's books. After looking through all the selections we made a discovery, they had nothing. Not one book on adoption for parents. None for adopted children either. It's not that there was a lack of reading material for parents though. There were books on enough diseases, social problems, discipline issues, and parenting philosophies to both educate and scare me to death at the same time.

Here's where the rage hit me. Why not just a few adoption books? Now it's not like I'm expecting every bookstore to have an adoption section, but there were a few titles on the shelves that could have easily be bumped for an adoption book or two. I mean, seriously, do we need 7 different books of baby names? Can't any of these books be replaced with google? And while I certainly am in the target market for "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Fatherhood," I'm not sure anyone would miss it if we replaced it with just one book on adoption.

I didn't go so far as to make a scene in the store (Ashley wouldn't have let me), but I can't help but feel like our society is failing. There are 147 million orphans in the world right now who simply need a loving home. Not a wonder drug to cure some rare disease, just a place to go. If there were an epidemic of 147 million children with broken arms, we'd have this fixed by tomorrow. Governments and citizens across the world would convene and decide that this is a fixable problem and dedicate all their efforts to making sure we solved it. Why can we not do the same for children who need loving homes?

Maybe someday we'll do better. Maybe eventually we'll get to the point that stores don't have adoption books because they sell them out quicker than they can stock them. Maybe we'll take this problem seriously enough that when you type "adopt" into google, the first 4 suggestions aren't about adopting a dog. But that only comes when our society begins to address this issue head on. Our hearts should break for the plight of these orphans. It's my prayer that someday we begin to take this problem seriously and get these children into the loving homes they deserve. And maybe we'll even get them to print a "Complete Idiot's Guide to Adoption" along the way.

ONE MORE THING: Don't forget that we'll be having a soup supper this Saturday, the 23rd, at Westview Christian Church. We'll start eating at 5:30 and enjoy music from members of the Calvary Christian Church praise team, followed by our speaker, Brian Walton, who will begin around 6:30. We're really looking forward to this and can't wait to see all of you there!

For the Love of Pinterest

I'm not a fan of pinterest. Ashley is on there all the time, but it's pretty much my contention that pinterest has ruined my life. Thanks to pinterest, there's always something new that we have to try. From projects around the house (like our floor made of pennies that will take months to finish) or something new for dinner, pinterest is at the center of every new idea in our house.

Having said that, pinterest does have some redeeming qualities. For example, there are those moments when Ashley hands me her phone and says, "Read this. It's funny." when pinterest makes me hate it a little less than I did before. Last Sunday night was one of those times. Ashley handed me her phone to show me that someone had posted a list of top ten things not to say to an adoptive parent. I have to say, some of these were some pretty odd questions. Things like "Aren't you afraid of what they'll inherit from their birth parents?" or "Aren't you worried the birth parents will stalk you?" were high on the list. It was strange that people are asked things like that, but we had a good laugh from it.

Here's the thing, sometimes you get questions that mean well, but aren't phrased well. Those we can deal with because they're said with the best of intentions, but questions like these 2 are just crazy. For the record, no, I'm not worried about what they'll inherit from their birth parents. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty excited for our kid. I've got a big head and huge ears, my kid is hitting the genetic lottery by not having any of my DNA. And no, we're not afraid of having a "birth-parent stalker." (I think those exist mostly in Lifetime movies anyway.)

But as strange and prying as these statements seemed when we read them, it was even more startling when one was directed to Ashley last week. There it was, almost word for word from the list of statements on the web, "You're having a baby the easy way." Wow. I mean I honestly didn't know how to react to that. Luckily, my wife is more composed than I am and she was able to just let it go, but I still can't understand it. I mean, if by "easy" you mean filling out paperwork every night for weeks until your hands ache, submitting yourselves to have every aspect of your life, marriage, home, finances, faith, and family questioned and probed all the while dealing the the paranoia of trying to come up with a perfect answer to every question and praying you don't fill out a form incorrectly? Then yeah, that's pretty easy.

Oh, then there's also the waiting for a potential placement match and, since we're not pushing babies out of factories or anything, that can take a while. But after the find a potential match, you get all the fun and excitement of meeting with the birth mother. This is where you get to convince to someone that this child she's carrying and wants the absolute best for, belongs in your home. (Yeah, I'm sure that won't be nerve-wracking. I'm just hoping I don't throw up.) But assuming you make a match, you get to spend the next few months worrying about your unborn child and praying that he's doing ok and their birth mother is doing all she needs to do to take care of him. So there's that, but that part is pretty easy, I suppose.

But then he's born and it's all good from there. Except for that whole thing of the birth mother signing papers to relinquish this child that she's now carried and cared for for the last 9 months to these strangers. Then we just get to have social workers stop in a few more times to make sure we're doing things right and wait until the adoption is final. Of course, until it's final, there's always the (however remote) chance that the birth parents are rethinking this and want to dispute it in court, so our hearts will stop every time the phone rings between the day he comes home and the day we finalize. And for the pleasure of doing all that, we get to pay fees for applications, placement, visits, profile book, background checks, etc. up into the tens of thousands of dollars. But yeah, that's pretty easy.

Look, I'm not about to say that childbirth is easy. It's not. But the process we're about to go through isn't either. As a matter of fact, I think it will be one of the most difficult things we'll ever do, but it's what we're doing because it's what we're called to do. And after going through it, our family, all 3 of us (plus any "players to be named later"), will be stronger.

We know there will always be people who aren't necessarily on board with this whole thing, and we're ok with that. And I'm sure that's not the last comment we hear that will get on our nerves. But we've been so overwhelmed by all the people who have been supportive and helpful with what we're doing that drowning out the negative people isn't really that hard. Still, if you're going to have something negative to say and you absolutely can't hold your tongue, it's probably best to say it around Ashley. After all, I've got huge ears and they don't miss much.

Oy, with the Questions Already!!

               So what did you eat for dinner 6 weeks ago? What’s your average wait time at your favorite drive thru? Can you describe in detail all the times you’ve tried to spend a Canadian penny within the borders of United States? If you can answer questions like these, congratulations, you’re ready to fill out adoption paperwork. You think I’m exaggerating? One of those is a real question we have to answer! Ok, maybe not, but still, these questions are rough. We were pretty excited when we first got our paperwork sent to us, but I’ll admit that this is pretty exhausting. Every night after dinner, we try to knock out a few more questions. It’s become our new hobby. Some people watch tv, some people read, we answer questions about any and all aspects of our lives. As draining as answering question after question is, we’ve managed to stay positive about it so far. The way we see it, this is just another thing that needs to be knocked out of the way in order for us to get our child. Hopefully we’ll get to the end soon, but until we do, we’ll keep chipping away at it.

           This reminds me of another thing, you guys are great. I’ve said that before, I know, but it’s true. So many of you have been so encouraging to us, whether it’s through facebook, emails, or face to face conversations, it’s all meant a great deal to us. We read an article the other day about top ten things people say to adopted parents that they shouldn’t say. Luckily, we’ve rarely heard any of them (rarely, though not never). But we’ve been very fortunate in that our friends have been great. You’re always checking on how things are going and asking questions, and we’re so happy to share this experience with you. And if you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask them. We love talking about this. Seriously, it’s pretty much the number one topic of conversation at our house. But reading all of the comments that other adoptive parents have received makes us realize how great our friends and family are. Thanks again for everything.