Adoption

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That’s What She Said

A few bloggers I follow always have a “That’s what she said” series and I LOVE them. It’s always a great place to find new articles that often resonate with me. More often than not I want to share them but they are kind of random so they never have a real place to fit in on my blog.

Thus, I’m creating my own “That’s what she said” series.

“How I lost Faith in the ‘Pro-Life’ Movement.” As someone who once considered herself pro-life this spoke to me in so many ways. In order to truly be pro life it means WAY more than anti-abortion.

Obamacare stands to cut abortion rates by 75%. And yet, the pro-life movement has been leveraged in opposition to Obamacare, and most especially in opposition to the birth control mandate. They don’t believe women should be guaranteed access to free contraception even though this access is the number one proven best way to decrease the number of abortions. That access would, to use the rhetoric of the pro-life movement, prevent the murders of 900,000 unborn babies every year.

Heather’s guest post on Momastery. I loved what she had to say, especially the excerpt below. Can’t wait to read her book.

The greatest shock of my life was to discover that the exposure of the very secret that I thought would kill me brought me the greatest relief. It turns out that when you give up on looking good, no one can make you feel bad.

Adoption. Ethics in adoption. It’s all Big Business. The more I know the less I wish I knew (not really, but-yikes). I have been following the discussion for as long as I can remember. Oh how I wish my eyes had been opened before I started. If you are starting out on adoption, or if you have friends/family who are you owe it to them and their possible future children to send them to some of the below links. The conversation has to be had. We can no longer bury our collective heads in the sand.

Jen Hatmaker is quickly becoming one of my favorite bloggers. After this, she shot to the top of my girl crush list (right after Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, obviously).

What would happen if we reallocated a percentage of the millions we spend on adoption toward community development? What if we prioritized first families and supported initiatives that train, empower, and equip them to parent? This would absolutely be Orphan Prevention, not to mention grief prevention, loss prevention, abandonment prevention, trauma prevention, broken family prevention. What if we asked important questions about supply and demand here, and broadened our definition of orphan care to include prevention and First Family empowerment?

My friend Amanda (she’s my real-life friend y’all, I’ve met her. I’ve talked with her. She’s amazing. Zach makes me distinguish between blogger friends-ones I’ve only “met” online and real-life ones. I have pictures with her, it’s legit.) is brave, strong, beautiful and amazing. You know those moments when you feel like you’re in the presence of greatness? I get that feeling from her right now. Read this. Read about her adoption. Read about the painful choices her family has made to ensure they’ve done everything they can to look their precious son in the eyes and know they did the right thing. She needs our help. Let’s rally around her.

We hope that, after reading our story, you will support us for this simple reason: we will not sign a gag order to protect our former adoption “agency” and their facilitator in return for the easy release of our documents.

Tara Livesay is a blogger you have to follow. I won’t take no as an answer to this. Go to her blog and follow her now. She has written about missions (more on that later) and adoption. She is intimately aware of both. One of my favorite posts she’s done has been this one.

It occurs to me that our western culture of capitalistim, materialism, and consumerism all play a large role in our attitude toward and approach to international adoption. Due to our wealth and ability to provide, sometimes without even realizing it we begin to believe that our material wealth makes us better suited to parent the child of a poor mother. What began as noble and pure and loving can farily easily begin to look a lot more like ethnocentrism and entitlement. 

I have family in missions, I have friends who have went on short term mission trips. I have never went on one because I just felt, for lack of better term, “icky” about them. Jamie has done an awesome job (as has Tara Livesay above) with the issues that can come from missions-both long and short term.

I’m telling you all of this because there is blatant fraud going on in the world of missions and in the name of Jesus. And that bothers me. If you support a missionary, if you’re a church that supports missionaries, if you’re interested in becoming a missionary, you should be pushing for clarity and transparency from the Missions world. Most missionaries will be able to answer your questions without resorting to evasive language and obscure ideas. But if they can’t? That should be a serious red flag and you should feel emboldened to push back until you clearly understand what they’re doing with their time.

Any other links you guys have loved lately?

 

 

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Mother’s Day

I love Mother’s Day. As much as I hate other Hallmark holidays, I just really love this one. I have no idea what it is exactly. Probably equal parts homemade cards from the kids and a day that I get to do no “typical” mom activities. My family is so good at spoiling me on every day but this day in particular they get just as excited to show me the love.

When we ask Binyam to write a thank you to someone it is indecipherable. This card? Can almost read every word. He claims he had no help from his teacher but I’ve never actually heard him use the words, “lovely” or “fabulous”. Regardless, I accepted with the most humblest of exclamations.

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Dailah’s…I mean it’s too much. The sleepy (beautiful) picture. Love it.

 

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Tariku gave me the standard one about growing from school but then he created this. Interestingly, we have never even referenced “saving” him so I had a little talk about that but otherwise the message (and art) is simply breathtaking.

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Tomas. “Mom, you are awesome because you have done almost everything to get Ethiopia water that is way awesome. You are sweet and cute and I thank you for doing stuff you are the best mom in the world.” I mean, really.

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And Trysten. My personal favorites, “My mom loves me and she loves to exercise and burn calories.” and “The best thing about my mom is everything.” Oh of course, “My mom loves me and she loves to eat veggies.” All true, of course.

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My friend Jody posted a status update that has gone positively viral. I was so thrilled to see many friends reposting it and knowing it came from a genuine, true place from Jody. The reason it was shared so much is because every mama of a child born unto another feels this way-or at least they should.

“Children born to another woman call me ‘Mom’… the magnitude of that tragedy and the depth of that privilege is not lost on me this weekend.”

Makes me teary just re-reading it.

Even though I love Mother’s Day I am acutely aware of how hard it must be for women who have lost children, who have made the decision to make an adoption plan. For women who want children but who haven’t known that pleasure yet. And for those two beautiful women whose sons I am humbly raising.

Sunday morning I woke up to my kids singing, “Happy mother’s day to you” and all I could think to do was offer up a prayer to Tariku and Tomas/Binyam’s mom.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. 

To all you mamas out there. Whether it be children you’re currently raising, have raised or will someday raise. To mamas of fur babies. To mamas who will never have children but choose instead to birth art or books or music that moves the next generation into beautiful action. To you aunties who help raise your nieces and nephews, to you besties who love your friends’s children more than they will possibly ever know.

I love you and am so honored to be amongst you.

Happy Mother’s Day

 

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5 years

I can hardly believe 5 years ago we landed in the Quad Cities for the first time with Tariku as our son.

This picture was captured the moment after we met Tariku for the first time.

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As much time as I had spent staring at his picture the months leading up to us flying to Ethiopia, I was shocked by him in the flesh. I couldn’t get over how bright his eyes were-even more than in his pictures-or how small he was. I had no idea that his smell would smell familiar even though I had never been to Ethiopia before, never held a strange 3-year-old and called him son.

When I look at that picture I see so much innocence in all of our faces. As well as the troubling realization that I overplucked my eyebrows. We had no idea how much work was ahead of us to actually feel like a family. It felt so real so immediately I think it blindsided us all when it took a little longer to find our footing. 

But mostly when I think of this day 5 years ago I think of how much I have changed because of Tariku. I knew that I could be an advocate for my child but I had no idea the strength I possessed before him. I knew I had a remarkable capacity to love, but I had no idea that sometimes wasn’t enough for my babe who felt so much loss. I knew from the moment I saw his sweet picture on my computer screen that I would love him for the rest of my life but I had no idea how that very love would open my eyes and tear off my skin in a way that had never been done before.

That day 5 years ago was a new stage of vulnerability for me that I was ill prepared for but has reaped in me a newer, better human. If it weren’t for Tariku, I genuinely don’t think I’d be who I am today. Despite all my flaws, the me now is so much better than the me then.

Today as I meditated I fought back tears the whole time. The feeling of gratitude is so alive on days like today-days that I recognize the magnitude of what happened 5 years ago.

So thankful for that day, and for this day. Because then and now Tariku is my son. My amazing, beautiful son.

*I blogged about our first trip to Ethiopia starting here if you’re interested.

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Empty

You know how when you are going through the birthing process and you’ve been pushing for 3 hours (no? just me?) and you swear to yourself-and your husband-that you will never, ever, ever be doing this again because it’s the worst kind of pain you’ve ever experienced and then the baby is placed on your belly and you’re all “oh yeah, I’m totally doing this again.”?

Or when you’ve hit the 4th snag in your adoption process, this process that was supposed to take x amount of time is now taking 3x and you swear to yourself-and your husband-that you will never, ever, ever be doing this again because seeing the face of your angel so far from you and not being able to go there is the worst kind of pain you’ve ever experienced. Then you meet that little one and you feel heaven slam into earth and you’re all “oh yeah, I’m definitely doing this again.”?

That space in between, that’s an empty space. You’re drained of your energy, your commitment, your time. It feels like you’ve poured it all into the process and now it’s gone and you’re all, fuuuuudge this sucks. Then you get through it and switch to, “Well I guess it wasn’t that bad.” because now you’re full. Because you’ve completed the process and all of that energy resulted in something and you look back and you forget how empty you once were because now you’re just so full!

I am totally empty these days.

My energy, my love, my time is being poured into Miss A and I am worn. out.

I have friends who have adopted little babies/toddlers and they talk so real about how trauma has affected their peanuts even though they were so small. I adopted only boys over the age of 3 so it seemed not so big a leap to assume the boys remembered/felt their loss (this is not to say I didn’t believe my friends, only to say I knew my boys were feeling it because they could tell me). Then we started taking care of A and anytime she meets with her family she has explosive diarrhea and night terrors for 2 days. 2 days. Her fear, her trauma, her past is so visceral this not yet 2-year-old doesn’t tell me she’s scared verbally but boy is it obvious!

So I pour it on, oh I lay it on thick. “How smart you are saying please and thank you!” “You are so beautiful!” I correct behavior that was learned under the fight or flight mechanism and I look her in the eyes and say comforting words or give a firm redirection. I pretend like I’m super glad she found me in the bathroom when I was hoping for a few minutes alone. Well, I do all that when I’m full-after a date night with Zach or lunch with friends.

When I’m empty I talk less, she looks at me sideways. She’s smart-yes she is. She knows when someone is only going through the motions and so she’s on to me when I’m empty. When I’m empty it exacerbates all of her issues.

And so I’m empty.

It feels so unfair to my kids who get only half the mom they were hoping to get (to be fair, they often fill me up when I need it as well). It feels most unfair to Zach who, yesterday, woke up to me saying, “I’m not going to talk to you right now. Everything is fine, I just can’t right now. I love you, but I can’t talk to you.”

I am in the middle.

A few months ago-I was out of the process. Before foster care we were in such a good rhythm that I had forgotten what it was like. I was so full I was giving energy away for free, man, here’s some of mine-take what you need.

Despite being empty and exhausted and near tears a lot of the day I’m so thankful I’m here. Because it reminds me that everyone is going through something. It reminds me not to pretend like I know the answers when my friends who are empty ask why I’m so full. It reminds me to say, “You’re in the thick of it. Press on, mama, you can do it.” Instead of, “Meditate, pray, have a big glass of wine.” Those things help but they are quick fixes to a long, laborious process.

So if you’re out there, if you’re empty too, just know that we are in the thick of it. Know that I love you, I get it. Press on, we can do it.

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The Table

Confession: I am really bad about making Ethiopian food. For as much as my beloved Ethiopian sons love the food, it is positively sinful I don’t make the effort more.

That said, a friend of mine brought us some injera last week and Tomas-daily-would open the basket and take a big whiff exclaiming, “The best!” I knew it was time.

At church a few weeks ago one of my pastors was talking about the significance of the table in the early days of Christianity. He was talking about how Jesus would invite “the outliers” to eat with him because they weren’t allowed to go to temple. If I remember correctly my pastor even said the Hebrew word for table roughly translates to “little temple” or something like that (I seriously might be making that up, my memory is a little fuzzy). The point being, Jesus knew sitting around a table and talking was just as good-sometimes better-as going to temple. And Jesus knew everyone was invited to sit at the table.

I love that. Mostly because I love food and I love talking over food. I found myself nodding in agreement a lot as the pastor spoke about the significance of breaking bread together.

Then Zach, Tomas, Tariku and I made Doro Wat and Shiro Wat together.

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When it was done we all sat together, toasted our families in Ethiopia and ate.

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And sure enough, God showed up. He showed up in the way Tariku belly laughed his way through dinner, He showed up in the way Tomas legit shoveled the food into his mouth. He showed up when Trysten and Dailah-usually not game for anything resembling spicy-ate a few bites and gave their brothers the thumbs up.

I think sometimes we think God’s only in the really spectacular places and we risk missing Him in the smaller ones. The table, for instance.

I know if you’re anything like we are, dinners often resemble the trading floor on Wall Street. But sometimes? Sometimes they can feel like going to church.

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Bodies Revealed

Friday the kids and I got to see an exhibit at our local museum, “Bodies Revealed”. It. was. fascinating. IMG_5801

For those not familiar, the exhibit features real bodies donated to specifically to the display. The bodies are put into different exercise poses (there was a soccer player, a golfer, etc). The skin is stripped off revealing muscles, bones, ligaments, etc. There are also separate cases with different organs.

My favorite part was definitely the discussions with the kids as they walked through the exhibit. There were lungs blackened from smoking, heart/lungs enlarged by obesity and a liver corroded by alcohol. Fascinating.

There was one case that featured a lung full of pneumonia. One of my darlings whose story is entwined with the disease was found coming back to the case over and over.

The body is an incredible thing. It made me remember just why I love being a fitness instructor/personal trainer-watching people learn to work with their bodies (as opposed to against) is a wonderful thing. Training people to fall in love with fitness and health is a really exciting job because it shows me every day that people are stronger than they think they are, they can do more than they believe and their bodies are capable of miraculous things.

If something like this comes into your town you must go see it! Then come back and tell me what you loved about it.

Until then, another picture at the exhibit, this one with my precious nephew Cassius!

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