Choosing Kids......Not to be Confused with Car Shopping

Can I just say, this part of adoption is AWFUL!!!

Seriously, how can anyone feel good about "choosing" kids??  I mean, I know we can't take them all, and I know we're going to have to say no to several children...but you try looking at their sweet faces and feeling anything but guilt and heartbreak when you do finally make a decision!!

Okay, okay...I'll take a quieter approach to this.  Let's back up a little bit.  :)  Sam and I decided we would pursue an independent adoption (blah blah - you read about this already in the previous post).  We had a couple of options (you read about that too), which means there are kids from both independent routes available to us.  We had the option of choosing from the kids available from either group, one from each, or go completely blind into this and ask an attorney to find us kids of a specific type: gender, age, etc...

Starting to sound like car shopping yet?

Sam wanted to wait until after the holidays and after we moved to make a decision of this magnitude (kids, not cars).  At first, I was pretty disappointed, and I'll admit, I got impatient.  However, in the back of my head, it always came to mind that these are going to be OUR CHILDREN for the REST OF OUR LIVES.  It's a big deal!  So, my husband is a smart man to not cloud our judgement with the many other things going on during Christmas, New Years, and moving into a new home.  :)

So...moving!  We closed on the house on Friday, January 4th, and moved the next day.  We don't waste any time :)  Especially when we're waiting to make an adoption decision until after we move!  We got to meet the sellers, and they met us on Thursday the 3rd to do a walk through of the house and property.  It was so great to meet them!  And I think it was really beneficial for them to meet us as well.  They moved into this home the day after their honeymoon.  It was not only their first home together as a couple, but it was where they raised their three children, and spent the last 36 years of their lives.  This house was/is very meaningful to them, and they were rightfully a little fearful of who it was being sold to.  Since we hadn't met, and they knew nothing about us from just doing the paperwork back and forth, they could have walked into their home for the last time to meet someone who had plans to bulldoze the property and build new.  She had even expressed concern of that exact thing happening.  They were thrilled to hear of our adoption plans, and even more excited that there would be little kids running around, just as theirs were years ago.  We spent the next 2 hours going through the home with them and visiting about each other.  They were such a sweet couple, and we were so happy to finally meet them.  I had wanted to reassure them for months now that we were going to take good care of their home.  We love it.  They took such great care of it when they lived here, and I wanted to give them the peace of mind that they could move on from their family home without the worry of what would come of it.

We had quite the crew helping us move that Saturday!  My parents came up from Norway, and we had our friends and family from here helping as well.  Century 21 lets you borrow their moving truck for free when you buy a house through them, so we were pretty set.  We took 3 loads in the moving truck, plus several people took loads in their cars.  Needless to say, the first item on the agenda after making an adoption decision - PURGE PURGE PURGE!!!  We have way too much stuff, and we are really trying to initiate a simpler way of living.  It was especially humbling, and guilt-filled to be honest, to watch as people carried loads and loads of boxes full of things...just things.  All I could think about was Haiti...how some people have a bowl and the clothes on their backs to their name and that's it.  That's IT.  An outfit and something to cook and eat out of.  Ugh...It took several trips just to get all of our food into the house.  It's sickening really.  Just because it's the American way doesn't mean it has to be our way.  We're making changes, that's all there is to it.

We got pizza to feed all of our help, and soon the weather turned pretty bitter.  It was the warmest day in the previous 2 weeks (20 degrees - woooohoo!) and sunny during the day, but once the sun went down, it got COLD.  We quickly finished pizza and went back out for one more truck load.  My mother-in-law and I vacuumed and deep-cleaned our other house so it was ready for renters, and finally finished everything at about 10:30 that night.  We started at about 1:30, with 12 people helping..long day!  What a blessing friends and family are!!!

Sam and I decided we would designate some time the following Monday to talk about adoption stuff.  We had a list of kids we could choose from, and wrote them all out.  It was horrible.  For me at least.  I'm not sure about Sam, because up until this point, he had chosen not to look at any children's photos.  While I was receiving referral picture after referral picture for the past 4 weeks, he peacefully opted out of looking at any of them.  Even from when we were with our agency, he didn't want to look at any photos of kids who were options to us.  He would look at other people's referral pictures, knowing they were already matched with another family and weren't an option for us...but he wouldn't look at the ones we could choose from.  It left me feeling a little alone in these emotions of despair and guilt that these poor children would go yet again without a family as we weeded through them.  However, I too had that option not to look.  I couldn't help myself, but looking back, it would have been emotionally smarter not to.  I completely respect Sam's decision not to look at all the pictures, because he logically knew we couldn't take them all.  It's a matter-of-fact that we have to leave all but two there, and if there's no way to change that, there's no reason to torture himself.

SAM'S SIDE NOTE:  Hello all, I felt like I should chime in here and clarify something.  During this long and sometimes very difficult process, I have chosen to never look at any photos of our "potential" children.  I chose to do this for a couple reasons.  1).  Similar to what Laura stated above, I don't want to get "too" attached to the thinking of "this is my child and I know what they look like and who they are."  As we have learned along the process, there are many setbacks and uncertainties, and knowing who your child is the largest uncertainty.  At one point in the process, I'm fairly sure we were close to 100% confidant we were adopting three children!  Now, those children aren't even a potential because we aren't even with that agency.  2).  I am basically terrified of judging these kids based on looks.  I'm afraid of my own fickleness.  I struggled during this process with choosing which characteristics we would consider in our future children, such as HIV+, cerebral palsy, deformed limbs, etc.  As I went down that checklist, saying yes or no to each one, I already felt like I was judging these kids before I ever met them or based on some illness they had no way of controlling.  I put myself in their shoes, thinking what if I was that orphan?  I have diabetes, would someone overlook me just because I'd be too difficult to deal with?  It was a horrible time for me, doing that list.  So, I came out of it with the rationale, I'm not going to let my stupidness or selfishness get in the way.  So, for me, I chose to do that by eliminating a judging element of my body...my eyes.  I figured, if I cannot see them, I can't judge them based on how they look.  Too often, we as a society (as well as sinners) judge people based on how they look.  I'm as guilty as anyone else and not proud of it.  There is a lot of second guessing that occurs once you have seen a photo of a child, "Is this child really that age?", "This child looks really angry.", "What is wrong with her hand?", etc.  These are all things I've heard people say who have looked at photos of potential children.  So, for what its worth, putting it in God's hands and praying for an accepting heart has helped me tremendously.  END SAM'S SIDE NOTE.

The other difficult thing is what we are deciding on children we've never met, know absolutely nothing about, and can assume the information we're given is somewhat inaccurate because there is likely no way to know for sure how old the child really is.  Imagine you're told you can choose between two red cars.  Both are automatic, have 4 wheels, and run.  Now choose.  There would likely be a hundred different questions you would want to ask before making that decision.  How new are the tires?  Does it run well?  Is one faster than the other?  Are there any rips in the interior?  Any body damage?  Has it ever been in any wrecks?  What happened in the wreck?  Was the car totaled or repairable?  Do the tires keep air?  What kid of gas mileage does it get?

You get the point.  We know virtually nothing about these kids.  Now with this, we actually don't care.  We don't care what damage they're coming with, or what their personality is like.  Do you get to make a robot baby when you're pregnant with all the "right" features and characteristics you want?  Nope.  Kids are unpredictable as it is, so this is not an issue for us.  If it were, and we wanted more control in picking the "perfect child" (because those exist?), we wouldn't be adopting.  Or having biological children. Or probably still married for that matter.  (I know I'm not perfect!  Sorry Sam - I know that comes of a shock ;)  We don't care that we don't know what the kids are like...but... not knowing makes it nearly impossible to have a reason enough to say no to children and narrow down the list.  What criteria can you possibly use if you have no information on them?  Besides age and gender, which we didn't care much about anyway, there's nothing to help make this decision any easier.

It's an awful part of this process.  I don't like it.  I really, really don't like it.  Enough said.


Now, on a side note, I'd like to talk about something that's come to mind...
About those pictures...

In the adoption world, it seriously clouds your judgement when you're looking at picture after picture of children who ALL need mommies and daddies.  I found it impossible to feel good about what we're doing for the two we will bring home, because there are millions left.  It would have been a good choice not to make this part of the process any less difficult - I should have been more selective with the pictures I opened.  I felt at the time though that I wasn't giving each child a fair shot like God would want me to if I didn't look at them.  And that is partially true - God doesn't always call us to do the easy things in life.  He calls us to do the things no other servant is willing to do.  SEND ME is the attitude we should have, not SEND ME IF... it's safe, it's easy, it's cheap.  So by opening myself up to every child I saw, I felt I was leaving my heart open to whatever type of child God has in store for us.  But...if I had been more selective, I possibly could have enjoyed this process a little bit more, and I worry this creates a level of stress in this decision making that steals away the positive and overjoyed feelings I should feel anytime we come one step closer to having kids here with us.

However, outside of the adoption world, the same principles don't necessarily apply.  I'd like to point out that this ability to choose not to look into the eyes of these sweet, sad orphans and tell them no, is a luxury we should be very careful about indulging in.  It's easy to turn our heads when we see pictures like this:  

But the luxury of turning our heads can often create a sense of "not my problem" in our minds.  Out of sight, out of mind is often what happens.  If we don't sometimes force ourselves to look at and remember how children are living RIGHT THIS MINUTE, we forget.  We forget our responsibility as Christians, and it becomes incredibly easy to justify the money spent on a movie ticket, or Starbucks instead of helping to save an orphan from starving to death.  Some say it's too complicated to know how to help...what will be most effective?  And those same people usually continue to do nothing.  Doing something is better than nothing.  Even if you can feed only one starving child, that is one more child that doesn't have to live and die in horrendous pain.  I find it very important not to turn my head away, but instead to study these precious children's faces and create a motivation in me that isn't easily dissuaded.  If the conviction isn't deep enough, it won't last.  At least not for me.  There are too many distractions around us, and I personally NEED to be reminded of the pain others are suffering that I, little insignificant me, can do something...anything...to change.

"Sometimes I would like to ask God why He allows poverty, famine, and injustice in the world when He could do something about it...

But I'm afraid He might ask me the same question."

~Anonymous