Adoption seems to generate a lot of fear in people. We fear what we don't understand. I guess that is some of what I hope to accomplish with this blog: helping people understand the choice to adopt, because the more we understand something, the less we will fear it.
Rob and I were afraid. We started talking about adopting in May of 2011 and did not send our application in until April of 2012. What did we do all that time? I look back and realize we spent those months trapped by our fears. I know in my head that time was necessary. We HAD to be on the same page. We needed time to gather information and make SURE we wanted to do this. In my heart I'm mad we "wasted" that time letting our fears rule us. And we had all kinds of fears:
Fear of the financial burden of adopting; and then supporting four kids
Fear of the sacrifices we might have to make along the way
Fear of how it could affect our marriage
Fear of the impact on our kids
Fear of the unknown diagnoses this child could come home with
Fear of the emotional difficulties she could have
I think probably one of the biggest concerns we had was "disrupting" this:
Slowly, as we were able to push our fears away, we were able to think of all that we might miss if we let them take over. Worried about disrupting our kids? Of course we were. But honestly, we worried about that every time we had a child. Each of my kids was a "disruption" to my life, and to each other's lives. And what a beautiful disruption they were!! You take a risk every time you have a child. We can't imagine our lives without each of our children. If we had let fear rule us, we might not have the 3 of them. What if we would have missed out on them? They have each changed us, and they have changed each other,
for the better. We wondered, what if we say no? What might we be missing out on? We don't really know what this is all going to look like now, 5 years from now, or 10 years from now. But saying no just because we couldn't be certain how it would all play out felt, well, cowardly.
For us, the ability to move past our fears came down to this: having faith and having hope. Rob and I have a lot of faith. We have faith in our kids and believe that they will be great big brothers/sister to their new sister. We have faith in each other and in our marriage. I feel like with Rob, I can do just about anything. And we share a belief that we are not in this alone, and that belief helped us to get to a place where we had the courage to do this:
Once we sent this in, it was like a weight was lifted. We did it! We made the decision. And we were able to move from living by our fears, to living by our hopes. The hope that we can change someone's life. The hope that our lives will be changed. The hope that our children will benefit from being a part of this. The hope that it will all work out. Let me tell you, this is SUCH a better way to live!! We are finding so much more joy living by these hopes instead of stuck by our fears.
I can't say that I don't still have fears. In the period of waiting we are in right now, sometimes the fears creep back in. They are different fears, but they are still there. That is just life. There will always be something to be afraid of. When I feel the fears, I draw on my faith and my hope, and then my courage is back. And it allows me to believe in something even better than what I already have.
"All our dreams can come true, if we just have the courage to pursue them"
-Walt Disney
