And yet another month gone...and so many changes

How do you mamas do it? How do you manage to blog and share, yet have time for all that you are called to do? I don't understand how it happens.

In the last month we have: been blessed beyond measure with bringing our son home again from Florida (this time for good!), finalized our beloved oldest daughter's adoption, Super Daddy was able to step parent adopt younger daughter and youngest son, we celebrated Christmas-complete with snow on the ground Christmas eve and Christmas morn, I interpreted my first church service (and decided I REALLY need more practice and a broader vocabulary before I do it again!), and enjoyed almost three weeks home together without school (and ten days of that without Super Daddy having to leave for work). What an amazing and blessed month!!!

Second to youngest son is home again...for good. How to share this story and do justice to just how God has moved in it? Hmm...I'll just do my best. About a year ago, an acquaintance-who has now become a truly treasured friend-and I set about praying with our husbands about our family doing respite for their oldest son (at that time 9, nearly 10). At the time, Super Daddy and I were committed to doing whatever this child and his adoptive family needed to help them all heal. Initially we all thought that our family's role would be that of respite family and encouragers. None of us wanted to see the adoption disrupt, even to us, if at all possible. He was adopted from China six years ago by an amazing Christian family who stepped out in faith, even knowing that he had a what some would consider a handicap. Second oldest son is deaf. He was given cochlear implants as quickly as possible once he returned to the US with his first adoptive family. They worked tirelessly to provide him with every opportunity to succeed educationally. His first adoptive family stepped out in faith to bring him home, to care for him with love, and were also able to step out in faith further when they felt they were no longer able to successfully meet all of his needs while meeting the needs of their other children. What a terrifying and sad place they must have been to know that in all of the gifts they have been given by God as parents, that parenting a child with attachment difficulties wasn't one of their gifts. What an amazing faith they showed to say "God, I see you have not given us this gift, please show us what role we are to have in his life. Please lead us where YOU want us to be to give this child what he needs in the body of Christ, even if that isn't our home."

Many people believe, I think inaccurately, that families who choose to relinquish a child or to disrupt an adoption do so out of selfish feelings or fear. Yes, some are afraid, and some do disrupt for selfish reasons, but in my experience most disruptions come from a deep love for the child and a desire to see his or her needs met in ways the original adoptive family simply can not. In our case, for example, our son is second oldest of seven children, but is physically smaller and one grade behind our youngest son. In his previous family (the one who was brave enough to step out to bring him home from China-something Super Daddy and I have never felt called to do, by the way) he was the oldest son, and the middle child. He was also the only deaf child. In our family he has an older Deaf (physically and culturally Deaf) sister, a younger brother with auditory processing disorder, and a house full of people who know ASL. Both families are loving, family oriented, Christian homes. Both families have professional fathers with great educations and mothers who, while they stay home, have good educations themselves. Both families have similar statements of faith, parallel views on education, and a desire to put family first. I say all of this to say that, in our disruption adoption, neither family was "bad," "better," "worse," "unfit," or thought this child was "disposible" (all things I have heard from people unfamiliar with disruptions, attachment disorder, second adoptions-not necessarily about ours, but in general). Both families are loving Christian homes who have different gifts, different skill sets, different needs and abilities. Both have one thing in common though-we have been abundantly blessed by this disruption and the upcoming adoption of this sweet boy by our family. We have formed, in a sometimes awkward but always transparent way, a larger family. We have formed a community where each family prays for the other on days of stress or need, where the mamas can call one another and share those "Can you believe this?!" moments, where the kids can say "yes, I've been there and it is HARD!" and truly understand one another, and where our wonderful son can hear-or see- and have affirmed that he is loved by so many people. His birth mom loved him enough to make sure he was found where he would be cared for in an orphanage in China rather than abandoning him in a countryside somewhere to die. His first family here loved him enough to do all they knew to do to encourage his education, his ability to communicate in both the hearing and Deaf worlds, and to help him to know Christ. His new family loves him enough to say "you are worth every tear, every battle, every moment good or bad", to help him to learn more ASL and to encourage him to continue with his speech therapy in English, and to continue educating him not only with "school" but in Christian discipleship.

We are all adopted into God's family, and by that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. Our earthly family has just gotten a little larger by welcoming this smiling child into our home-not by one child, but by one child and all of the family who has loved him before.

I've gotten off track, and not touched on some of the other amazing things that have happened over the last month, but those can wait for another day. Few things have meant as much to me, or been as full of the Spirit, as bringing our son home. For about half the year last year, this amazing piece of our hearts lived with his other family. We loved them through their daily joys and trials, just as they love us through ours. We missed him terribly while he was gone, and truly never dreamed he would be back in our home. During that time we never once thought "we could do xyz better" we only prayed that we could support them and this sweet boy in all things. We prayed, as they did, for God's will in the entire situation. After a season of missing him in our home, and a season of trying and learning in theirs, we all decided his needs would be best met here. I lovingly call my husband Super Daddy, because in the eyes of his family that is truly his spirit.

In practice, however, he is no more super than I...we are just two parents who love our children, each other, and God who want to do our best for all of those. I am grateful every day that He has given me not only my family, but the amazing support system that I have been given-God Himself, my children's school, our church, the families of my children-some birth families or other first families, and the best case manager in the world. All of these people are needed in our "village" and without them, we would be stumbling in the dark.