Love Letter To My Child

My sweet child,

I want you to know that you are loved.  You have occupied a space in my heart for the last eight years.  Even though I don’t know your face or your name, I have loved you since the day the decision was made to bring you home.

I want you to know you are wanted.  I pray you never spent a moment asking if anyone wanted you.  We have wanted you to be a part of our family for a long, long time.  You will always be wanted by our family.

I want you to know that I pray for you constantly.  I pray the Lord blesses you and keeps you safe and happy.  I pray for your caretakers and I pray for your birthparents.  I know God holds you in His loving hands, but I plead each day He continues to do so, and that he smooths the path to our meeting.

Each night before I fall asleep, I hold a stuffed bear in my arms.  One day, after I have seen your sweet face for the first time, I will send you that bear to sleep with until I can come get you and bring you home.  I want you to know that when I hold that bear, you are the last prayer on my lips at night and the first prayer I whisper in the morning.  Thousands of miles away, I pray you feel that love.

Waiting for you but loving you always,

Your Mama

Hope

Hope 

By Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

The most commonly read post on this blog is this one.  I will specifically quote one paragraph from that entry that was particularly painful to write.

It’s not a good feeling, feeling that you’re not good enough to be a parent.  I will say with 100% certainty that being forced through this emotional wringer over the last eight years has made me much more acutely sensitive to my future child’s emotional needs.  There is pain in knowing that who I am so severely limits my possibilities for adoption.  There is pain in knowing that because of a diagnosis, we were not good enough to be Pooh and Tigger’s parents.   

Despite what people have said to the contrary, my all-time biggest fear was that we would not be looked at as good enough for a child’s social worker or for ICAB to sign off on a referral for us.  That they would say out of five potential families, we would consistently rank as the #5 – until forever, really.  You can say it’s silly.  You can tell me I’m nuts.  You can tell me that would never happen.  But that was my biggest fear.

We’re still waiting for a referral.  There is not a referral on the horizon just yet – we still have to wait our turn.  

But finally, finally – someone we can trust told us in the most concrete way imaginable that we were Good Enough.  And that is something that gives me an indescribable amount of hope.  Hope that there will be a child, and that someone out there knows I will be a good mommy one day.

What does 27 months sound like?

Well, if you were in our house today, 27 months sounded an awful lot like the vacuum cleaner running, the carpet shampooer cleaning, the washer running, the dryer running, feet pounding up and down the stairs in a hurry trying to get it all done in time – followed by bats cracking and six- to eight-year-old boys yelling and screaming at a baseball game.  That’s what 27 months sounded like to me, anyway.  Oh, and don’t forget the bickering.  Because I was in a VERY cranky mood today.

Gregg and I originally had our second homestudy update scheduled with the social worker for June 26.  Something – don’t ask me what it was – had me suddenly feeling all nesty and in the mood to clean the last week or two.  Maybe it was the weather.  I don’t particularly like to clean that much.  Imagine my delight in how clean my house was when we got an e-mail requesting that the home study be moved to tomorrow!  Still, we do have quite a few fur babies, and even though our social worker has told us every single time she has come to visit that she also has two large dogs and she is quite used to homes with pets, I normally prefer to go overboard with the carpet cleaner.  Just because.  By the time I was finished with the vacuuming and carpet cleaning (and laundry), I was pretty much ready for a nap but it was time for Gregg’s coach pitch game.  (Thankfully it was just one game this weekend.  The last two Saturdays were double headers!)  The boys play a six-inning game, and by the bottom of the fourth it started to rain. 

Gregg will tell you I’ve been bitchy all day.  I’ll tell you I’m tired and irritated.  And since it’s my journal, I can say that.  I’m irritated that it’s gotten to 27 months and is just going to keep going.  I’m irritated that I’ve spent the better part of a week getting ready for my third homestudy.  I’m tired trying to say “Maybe today will be the day” every single Friday so that I don’t let myself go down the path of believing that I’m going to be doing homestudies and fingerprints every year and a half for the rest of my life because this adoption will never ever happen.  (Which may be what Lakota thinks.  When we came home from church tonight, she had gotten her jaws on my copy of Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child and ripped off the front cover and shredded the first section.  So that’s what she thinks.)

So I’m tired.  And cranky.  And absolutely unapologetic about it.  But, hey – my house is clean.  And that, my friends, is what 27 months sounds like today.