Writing is often a terminal step for me in processing deep thoughts. When thoughts have rolled around in my head long enough, writing them out helps me organize them and finalize my conclusions. Nine months after D moved on, I still have thoughts about him and about adoption in general swirling through my head. I’m going to try to sort some of them out here. And now a disclaimer: Even though God plays an important role in my life, I rarely mention Him outside of certain limited contexts (family prayer time, church, teaching in a Catholic school). The reasons for that could probably fill another blog post, but I won’t go there today. However, I feel that my current topic cannot be fairly addressed without mentioning God, so today I’m breaking that barrier.
I had been interested in adoption for many years. I had read books about adoption, stalked photolisting websites that had profiles of waiting children, and followed blogs of families that journeyed through adoption. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, that some people feel ALL adopted children should be considered to have special needs because of the losses they have experienced. I felt that there was a reason I felt such concern for children who needed families, that God was calling me to adopt. I had to wait a long time: our house was too small, we couldn’t afford another child, we were going to be moving to another country. Finally, we moved, our financial situation improved, and we felt we could add another child to our family. Don gave me the choice between adopting and having another baby. I wanted to do both, but I chose adoption. I knew that if we had a baby, it would mean years before we could again consider adopting, and I didn’t want to wait that long. It just seemed the right thing to do. Prayer was part of that decision-making process.
Prayer was also part of making the decision to move forward with adopting D. We were in contact with a social worker about another little boy at the time. When we were contacted about D, we seemed to be a particularly good family for him and we noted certain things in his social history which made us think he would integrate well in our family. Still, it took some serious reflection to decide to give up on the first boy in order to move forward with D. When we made that decision, I felt confident that it was what God wanted us to do.
Fast forward several months. The going was rough with D’s food issues and tantrums. His communicative skills were significantly delayed. I worked hard to stimulate his language development, to teach him self-help skills, to be fair and consistent in dealing with his behavior, to expand the range of foods he would eat. And he made progress. I could see it, his social worker could see it, his grandmother was amazed by it. Attachment is always a concern in adoption, but he had no difficulty establishing an attachment to us.
However, I didn’t establish a strong attachment to him in return. I loved him, I worked hard to take good care of him, I wanted things to work out, I wanted him to be with us happily ever after (or at least, functionally ever after). But wanting and trying were not enough. In moments of stress (and there was plenty of stress, let me tell you), I behaved in ways that I am ashamed of. When I realized that there was a real problem with our relationship, I called our social worker, paused our adoption process, got help, and tried to work through it. I didn’t want to give up on him. I didn’t want to cause yet another loss in his young life. I thought I got over it, I thought I could deal with it. We continued on the adoption path. Then we hit another snag and I was thrown right back into fear and despair. I talked with the social worker, who told me we had to decide if we were going to commit to him or not, because if not, she wanted to get him into a permanent family as soon as possible. I took some time to think it over and decided that I just wasn’t comfortable making that commitment. Don and I talked it through and he supported me.
Those of you who’ve been reading my blog probably knew most of that history (and then some; there’s more to the story than summarized above). I suppose I could have skipped it, but making that decision still haunts me to a certain degree, so I think it’s worthwhile to have written it out again. I wonder if I gave up too soon. I wonder if things would have worked out if I had just trusted God more and kept on going. I wonder how things got so bad when I thought we were doing the right thing, when I thought we were doing what God wanted. I wouldn’t say I felt angry at God, more disappointed. Deeply disappointed. And hurt. Our whole family was hurt by the experience, D was hurt, his grandmother was hurt, and I feel like I caused that hurt because I was the one who made the decision to end his placement with us. I was the one who made the decision to pursue an adoption in the first place, and look where it got us. Did I totally misunderstand God’s will? Did I just project my desires on Him and decide it was what He wanted? It makes me uncertain in my relationship with God and less confident in my own decision-making abilities.
But I can only beat myself up so much. I can’t know God’s mind. For all I know, maybe this is what He wanted. For various reasons I won’t go into here, D would not have been placed originally with the woman who is now his mother (the adoption has been finalized). Maybe God needed us to be the vehicle to get D into the system to get him to the family where he belonged. I felt terrible about having D baptized and promising to raise him as a Christian, then backing out of that commitment when he moved on. But his new mother is not religious and he probably would not have been baptized otherwise, so maybe it was a good thing we did it for him. I don’t know and I can’t know, so at a certain point, I just have to let it go.
Will we try again? Maybe someday. One thing is almost certain, and that is that international adoption is off the table for us. I enjoy reading stories of families that have adopted internationally and I know there is a great need for families for children from certain countries. Those who are not adopted face bleak futures in countries where the social welfare system doesn’t provide the kinds of supports that exist here. All adoptions expose people to risk. But after the experience we had with D, we would not want to take the risk that the adoption might fall apart after spending tens of thousands of dollars to adopt a child we had never met (or only met briefly, in some countries). I definitely am afraid of adopting again. What if I couldn’t attach to a second child? What if I caused all this pain and loss again? Deep down, I do feel that it’s possible we could adopt successfully. I couldn’t connect with D, but there are lots of children out there with whom I probably could connect.
The Children’s Aid Society doesn’t place children out of birth order. In other words, they will only place children who are younger than the youngest child already in the home. They also require at least 18 months after a child is born or placed in the home before the placement of another child, and they prefer children to be at least a year apart in age. So we wouldn’t be eligible to adopt again until Simon’s 18 months old, at which point we could adopt a baby. However, we don’t want to adopt a baby. They’re a ton of work and there are so many unknowns regarding their future development. There are plenty of people out there who do want to adopt babies; we’re not going to compete against them. In fact, my interest has mostly been in school-aged children, who are typically harder to place. But it will be years before we could consider adopting a school-aged child, so for now, we just need to focus on our biological kids.
I’d be tempted to just forget about adoption altogether, or at least ignore it for a long time, if it wasn’t for my friend Joy. She is the only person I know of who follows my blog that I’ve never met in person (if there’s anyone else out there, please leave me a comment–I’d love to know you exist). She found my blog after I wrote about attending the Adoption Resource Exchange (ARE) in Toronto; we’ve been following each other’s blogs and become Facebook friends since. She and her husband are adopting three siblings that they first expressed interest in back at the same ARE. Her comments about her kids and links to articles and other peoples’ blog posts related to adoption challenge me to keep thinking about it. Who knows, maybe God is working through her to keep me from giving up on adoption (heck, even her name sounds like it comes from God!). Whether or not we eventually pursue another adoption, I’m enjoying following her family’s story.
My thoughts about adoption are complicated. I don’t regret trying to adopt, even though it didn’t work out. For the most part, I feel we made the best decisions we could at each step along the way. I am a little sad that we ended up with a permanent seven-year age gap between kids. It’s not the way I would have planned a family, but it’s the way it is. There are lots of different kinds of families and no one right size or spacing of kids. I give thanks to God for the family that I have.
Edited to add: As my thoughts on this subject evolved, I wrote more thoughts about adoption and why it didn’t work.
That was a really poignant and thoughtful reflection. Thank you for sharing it.