The Full Story

November is National Adoption Month, and every adoption-related blog or Facebook page I follow seems to be posting about it. (Side note: if you're looking for two particularly stellar posts, check out this one from an adoptive mom, and this one from an adult adoptee).

I love seeing all these adoption-related articles and posts flying around the internet. But it also creates this intense struggle within me. Nothing has made me examine my thoughts on adoption, or my theology of adoption, so much as this process we are in. Obviously, as being actively involved in something causes your opinions to change or evolve around the reality as you live it.

Almost two years ago, I wrote a post about the conflicting emotions I have about foster care and adoption. I wrote "...in the months to come, I expect to grieve and I hope to celebrate. These things will happen hand-in-hand, in bittersweet moments. My heart will both break and rejoice as I welcome children into my home when they have just been ripped from theirs."

I look back on that and realize that is more true than I could ever have imagined. My feelings and thoughts about adoption, birth families, transracial parenting, openness are so hard to define and equally difficult to explain.

I love foster care and adoption with a broken love, because they are broken things. Angela Tucker calls it "a necessary solution to an unfortunate need."

I believe in first families, reconciliation, and orphan prevention as a first option. But I believe that protecting children from harm is equally important. Two number one priorities. This is something too large to cover in one post spanning all types of adoption, so I'll stick with foster care, because that is my reality.

There are a lot of things I hate (yes, hate) about the foster care system, but the priority for reunification is not one of them. In some cases, it is considered the goal long after it should not be. However, in many cases, these parents are raising their children in the only way they know how, the exact way they were treated by their own parents. The foster care system exists to come alongside and break that cycle. It certainly does not do it perfectly, but that is the goal.

The hard part is where to draw the line in the sand, set a deadline, and say it's too late. Because the truth is these children are growing up in the system – my children were growing up in the system – waiting. Waiting for the cycle to be broken so they could go back home. But it never was; it still isn't. So, adoption is the second option, and here we are.

My family is beautiful, but it's a beauty born out of brokenness.

So often, though, I think the story of adoption gets cut short here. They are adopted, the end. Happy Day. But that's not the end of the story. The story of my children and their first family is not over. We cannot act as though their birth families do not exist, or will not continue to exist in reality or in their minds. Not only would that not allow them to truly heal from what they have experienced, but it would invalidate who they are. My children would not be here without their birth parents, they would not be who they are without them.

The other day the boys and I were eating dinner and Little Man said, "I wish I had two moms." (This comment came out of some confusion about a friend of his who calls her grandmother and mother both some form of mom.) I was a little conflicted about what to say at first, but after a few seconds, I told him the absolute truth. "You do have to moms." I explained to him that he has a mom whose belly he grew inside of and he also has me who he lives with now.

Here's the thing, LM does not have memories of his birth mom like his older brothers do, so it would have been so easy to dismiss this statement in a light-hearted way "sorry kiddo, your stuck with just me!" But that's not the truth. And, while the truth is much more complicated than all I told him that day, I always want him to know about his birth mom. When he is old enough to understand more about his birth mom, he will hear more about her, from us and from his brothers. And some day, if he wants to meet her face to face, we will do everything we can to make that happen as well, while still considering his safety. The same is true for our older boys.

We will never be silent about their birth family, or try to stifle their feelings or memories of them. Because adopting our boys doesn't mean that we are their only family now, it means we are added to the family they already had, and that is the full story.

There's an Army Man in my Medicine Cabinet

The last time I (Andy) posted anything on a blog was when Xanga was cool - so bear with me. I've been told that I write like I talk so feel free to respond and interact verbally while you read this.

The army man may or may not be mine but the fact remains that there is a an army man on the bottom shelf of the medicine cabinet in our master bathroom and I didn't put it there. He's been there for at least a month a half and I don't see him retreating back to base camp anytime soon. It has been such a gigantic life change to go from being just the two of us to the now family of five that we are. (Wow! I still can barely believe it!)

I can't help but look back over the past ten months and try and list the hundreds of changes that have happened in our life. Bigger house, bigger car, more toys, the seemingly million appointments every month, lack of personal space, and the list goes on and on. But for every one change in our life there's a hundred for each of our boys. Between our three boys they have lived in eight different homes, they have attended three different school districts, they've had countless caregivers, and their list goes on and on and on.

These boys, our boys, are our life now. We can't remember what our life was like before them and we don't care to know. Of all the places they have lived ours is different because we will, God willing, be their last home as children. Ours is different because they are healing here. Ours is different because they can call us dad and mom. And one of the many things these boys need is to be somebody's life. They need to be in a place where they can leave toys everywhere because it's their house too. Building in basic security, that a lot of us got as kids growing up not even realizing it, is what we do most often with our boys.

This is what's been on my heart lately because this is a really tough part of foster care and adoption. It's easy to forget that the boys are stuck in survival mode sometimes and that makes it frustrating for us.

So here's an update on where we are at with our adoption process. We went to court today for what we thought was going to be a kind of pretrial. It was actually just a time to set up the termination hearing. It could have been more than that if the birth parents had decided that they wanted to voluntarily consent to our adoption. So now we await the termination hearing which lasts for a day and a half and its decided whether or not to terminate their parental rights. The birth parents can still consent as late as the day of the hearing.

This is a very strange and difficult spot for us and we would appreciate your prayers. Pray that we can navigate our feelings and have the wisdom to guide our precious and fragile boys through this process. Even though we try on our own too often, we know that God's plan will be the last say.

"Because I Always Come Back"

I know a lot of people are wondering what's going on since the hearing last month, so I want to give a brief update on that before I get to the thing I actually want to say. 

The short summary is that the boys' birth mom decided not to consent to our adoption, which means the case will go to trial for the termination of parental rights. The pre-trial is scheduled for late January. There will be another opportunity for the birth parents to consent to the adoption at pre-trial, but if that doesn't happen a termination hearing will be scheduled after that. We do not know how long it will take for this process to be complete, and after this process we have the adoption process to complete as well. It may be a long road, but we are in it for the long haul.

Also, for those who may interact with the boys, here's what they know: We love them very much, and we go to court to tell the judge how much we love them and how much we want them to be in our family forever. They obviously know that something went wrong in their birth home that made it so they couldn't live there. If you are ever around the boys when adoption or their birth family comes up, please, please do not speak negatively about their birth family. You also don't have to feel strange about it if they talk about anyone from their bio family in front of you -- this is their reality. Their family includes both their birth family and us, and it is not "off limits" to talk about their birth family or their life before they lived with us.

So there's an update on the legal process, and here's an update on our life in general...

There are a lot of emotional issues that we have to deal with, raising our boys who have experienced so much loss and trauma. I do a lot of research, a lot of planning, a lot of analyzing. We really try to be intentional with the way we parent the boys to address the heart issues of what is going on in their grief-ridden minds and hearts. Inevitably, however, things slip through the cracks. Moments pass by that could have been an excellent moment to reinforce healing or safety, and I totally miss them. But that's fine, because I'm human...and because I have a partner in this crazy thing called parenting. And my partner is a straight-up rockstar, and he seizes moments that I am too crazed or too distracted to see.

The boys experience a lot of anxiety when one or both of us has to go somewhere (let's be clear, if we both go somewhere there is a babysitter here with them). We always make sure to tell them where we are going, when we are coming back, what we are doing, etc, to prepare them for this disruption in their new-found stability. Still, this tends to rock them and leave them feeling upset.

Anyway, one evening Andy was getting ready to go to work (night shift, boo!) and Little Man was getting super upset about it, as per usual. And then, BAM!, my husband went into rockstar mode and turned this moment into an opportunity to speak love into our boys' deep insecurities. The conversation went like this:

Little Man: "DADDY, I NOT WANT YOU GO TO WORK!!!"
Andy: "I know, but I'm going to come back. You want to know why?"
LM: "Why?"
Andy: "Because I always come back."
LM: "Why?"
Andy: "Because I love you."

Because I always come back.

This may seem to be one of those things that goes without saying, but to our children, who have lived the majority of their lives with no stability at all, with ever-changing caregivers, with no concept of safety, this is a vitally important fact to communicate.

Since that day, we say this every day to our children, anytime we go somewhere without them. We have them repeat it back to us, so we know that they understand that we are coming back to them, that we care for them, and that we will be here to keep them safe.

This has certainly not erased all of their anxiety, but it has gone a long way to encourage their growing trust in us, which is a great step.

Birth Parent Visits

In Illinois, there is a status hearing for each case every three months. At this hearing, the caseworker reports how the kids are doing in their placement, how their relationships are with their birth families, etc. There was a status hearing for our boys the week they moved in with us, and so the next one is scheduled for Tuesday.

At this hearing, the main goal is to decide whether the boys' visits with their birth mom should continue. The decision will be based on a report from both their caseworker and their court-appointed advocate on whether or not the visits seem to be in the best interest of the boys, or if they are having a negative impact on them. This is based on a number of factors, including our observations of their behavior.

Currently the boys' visits with their birth mom are limited and monitored. We haven't noticed any real behavioral issues with them after visits. So when we were asked by the case worker and advocate if we had noticed any extreme behaviors after the visits, I told them no, and also gave my opinion about whether or not the visits should continue.

I think they should.

That may seem strange, but here are a few of the many reasons why I would prefer the visits continue:

First, the truth of the matter is, she is their birth mom. I will never be able to erase that truth, and I never want to. If I were to try to discount her role in their lives, I would be ignoring so many of the genetic and experiential things that have come together to form my children's identities at this point. Regardless of her ability to care for the boys, she is part of their story, and now she is part of ours. That will never change.

Second, eventually these visits with her will stop. It's hard to communicate this point well without sharing too many details about their case, but that day will come, and it will come at the end of a much-too-long journey in foster care for my children. At that point the minimal emotional confusion that the boys experience during these visits will stop being triggered by her physical presence, but it will not stop. What's more, is that eventually my children will begin to understand more clearly the path that brought them to us, and that will serve to confuse their feeling about their birth mom and family even more. My children have a lifetime of dealing with complex feelings regarding their relationship with her ahead of them, regardless of whether or not she is physically present in their lives. At this point, they are still young enough to appreciate their limited time with her, and I want them to enjoy that before it becomes clouded by all the things they are currently too young to process.

I do hope that the judge decides it is in the best interest of the boys to continue the visits, for the time being. However, I am also looking forward to the day when a judge is no longer the one making those decisions, or when they no longer have quarterly status hearings, or a case number, or a different last name...