Months ago ... September 27th, 2010 to be exact, I posted a long time coming, heart felt post, describing what I had been going through the past 6 months, after adopting 3 children from Ethiopia. I was actually doing great, yet upon feeling wonderful, I realized I had been just coping for 6 months. It was like being in a fog or a storm for so long, you just adjusted to the weather and it was normal. Yet when the sun appeared I realized, wow, I guess I've been in a storm, cause this sunshine is wonderful! Kind of like when we lived in Washington for years and it rained for months. You just coped, adjusted, adapted. Then we moved to Montana ... Big Sky Country and ... Oh. My. Gosh. How did I stand it for so many years with the dark and dreary skies? I felt like a mole emerging out of the ground. I could see the light! It was like taking a breath of fresh air!
So, back to my post ... at the time, the Lord had just starting to talk to us about adopting again. I recognized his voice. It was the same as when after 9 months of my first pregnancy, and me wondering "How does ANYONE do this twice!!" I felt the nudging of the Lord to have another baby. Thus my son. But then again .. I had always said I will have 2 children. It was a vow I think I had made as a youth. But never more than 2. One for each parent to deal with, right?
So for a year ... literally, the Lord would talk to me ... urging me, asking me ... "Wouldn't you like to have just one more? Just one more?" "NO, LORD!!!" I can't believe that was where I was at back then, 10 years ago. It took a year of nudging, of pressing me, wooing me. And finally I gave in and said "Yes Lord." And this time, without months of trying and false pregnancy tests .... BOOM . I was instantly pregnant... with Anna, sweet spirited Anna. She was prophesied over and it was said that she would be like Anna in the temple worshipping God day and night, and her spiritual beauty would draw many to God. It is all over her.
OK, so now I was on a roll. God had changed my heart. Years later after much grief and many failed attempts at more pregnancies, we began our adoption journey and brought our 3 children home from Ethiopia. One boy, Gezaw Joshua, and 2 sisters, Bethlehem Hope and Zakeya Joy. We read all the books, did all the research. All about the children and how their lives are affected. But NO ONE told us about the aftermath, what WE might go through! About what happens after you bring them home and all the waiting and hoping and praying was actually over. And real life begins and now you try to find what we called, "The New Normal".
So we muddled through it. For us, really it was not that bad. My new daughter tried to bite me once or twice, but I think that was the extend of the uglies. Thank God for Facebook Friends and online Adoption Groups, because really no one we knew had any good things to say to encourage us. No one had a clue. And if they did, they weren't talking. But Praise God, we made it through with his help and one day I was feeling extra wonderful and I realized ... wow, I just made it thru the dark season and now I'm beginning to see the light of day again! It took about 5 months.
Right about then, when I was just catching my breath, I heard God say, there were two little boys that needed to be added to our family. I could not believe it. No way. Not happy God. But true to form after getting over the shock I jumped and just embraced it and started moving in that direction. We called our homestudy agency and told them the great news, and when they came to do our homestudy update, the gal broke the news to me. We were not ready to adopt yet. We needed to stop pursuing this until one year had passed. Huh? I had a Both Hands Widow Orphan project scheduled for the next month! We knew we had heard God. This was a bitter pill. I found out later she had read my honest blog post from September 27th http://wildprairiefarms.blogspot.com/2010/09/are-you-sure-you-dont-want-just-one.html and decided if I had gone through all that, perhaps I was not ready to adopt yet.
I WAS FURIOUS!!!! I was trying to be transparent about what adoptive parents go through, and I was even sharing it AFTER THE FACT, and I was being judged. People, don't you realize what you do to others when you judge them when they are honest about their wilderness experience. When they get REAL and honest about how it REALLY is and you blast them? I makes people quiet. It's not acceptable to say what's really happening. We have to smile and say things are great and suffer in silence.
Adoption is wonderful. And hard. And glorious. And exhausting. And enriching. And draining. And God is all over it, loving every minute of it as he changes us into the likeness of His Son. It is like a picture of marriage, joining lives together from 2 different worlds, with one common purpose. To be family. Why do we make it NOT OK to talk about it and be REAL????
So, the other night on Facebook, someone posted this AWESOME blogpost from Jen Hatmaker
http://jenhatmaker.com/blog/2011/09/06/after-the-airport
