Please go read Julia's beautiful post. She is running a massive giveaway to help us raise the remaining funds for our adoption and to help a sweet little boy's grant grow so that he can be seen and adopted too. Today she is talking about some hard conversations.
We've had these talks, especially with Orion. It's so hard to tell your child that you don't know for sure why their biological family left them in the hospital, but you will never do that. I can make guesses, but I don't know for sure, because I would never do that. Orion was very upset with me before our youngest was born. He thought that I was going to leave this baby at the hospital like he had been left there. He didn't believe me that we WOULD NOT do that. He didn't believe it until we came home with that baby in our arms. And even after that, when our baby had his first few doctor visits, Orion was SO worried that the doctor wouldn't let me bring him back home. He and his brothers watched out the window until I came back, trying with all their might to protect their new baby brother from the same thing they experienced. Still not knowing for sure if this family that brought them into their hearts and their home was safe enough to trust, safe enough to bring that baby back home. It makes my heart hurt.
That hurt in my heart still doesn't compare to the hurt of waiting. How Orion would tell us he stayed up at night, saying "Please God, give me a mama." How he has asked us with so much hurt in his voice why we didn't come sooner. "I sat in a baby chair and it was bad and I didn't like it. Why did you leave me there? Why didn't you come when I was a baby?" So much hurt.
I wish I could turn back time and erase all of that hurt. Those years without a mama and papa. I wish I could take away those years learning that the only way to survive was to be the center of attention. Or for another child, the only way to survive was to pretend he couldn't do things for himself so that he could have a little more interaction. I wish I could have come before. I wish we could have come before another boy learned that sitting alone on his bed in his room was the safest place to be because other boys would leave him alone there. I wish I could have come before all those scars happened. I wish I could have come before little boys were sent to live with great big men who scared them, men who were once little boys themselves. I wish I could have come before my boys slept in lonely baby house cribs. But we couldn't come then, so we came as soon as we could.
There is a special pain in adopting older kids. I see people adopt babies and I mourn with them for their children who choked down formula as fast as they could and then were given injections to sleep in eerily quiet rooms. My older kids were those babies. I see people adopt toddlers and I mourn with them that their children don't know how to be held or how to play with toys. My older kids were those toddlers. I see people rush to adopt a child who has just been transferred and I mourn with them for all the loss those children have experienced. My older kids were those kids transferred far too young into a life no child should live. I see people adopt other older kids, teenagers on the verge of aging-out, and I mourn with them.that their children waited for too many years. My older kids have waited too many years too, and I know what it does.
Thankfully there is a special joy in adopting older kids as well. I rejoice for every single child adopted younger, spared the years my children went through. I rejoice for every older child adopted before aging out snuffs their last hope. Our older kids bring so much beauty to our lives, even as we work through the brokenness and hurting hearts that come from so many years waiting.
We have four more older kids to bring home. Four more hearts to bring into our home and our family. I know each one of them will break and rebuild my heart anew. It will be happy and it will be sad and it will be so worth every single moment. But first we need to get them home.
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Please check out Julia's amazing giveaway. So many people have donated so many items from their hearts, to help us and to help tiny Otto. Thank you to everyone who has been sharing and donating. I can't thank you enough.
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