We don't expect to have too much to say these days. We're just settling back into our reality of The Wait. It's been particularly quiet with our agency counselors out of town for a vacation last week, so we knew not much would be happening on the growing family front. Then, they came back.
Yesterday, all of the adoptive families working with our agency, regardless of their documented preferences on family size and child's health, got an email about a set of siblings who are waiting to be adopted. These kids are living in individual foster homes and need a forever home fast. Opening our home to them would be an instant family of five, with three under age 4! Now, that's enough to get your heart pounding.
Josh and I spent a few hours thinking through it, trying to find room in our humble abode, knowing there is already room in our hearts and reminding each other to breathe. We were taken back to 2007 and the beginning of our journey into parenthood when we were wondering just how big we wanted our family to be. And, we wanted BIG love in this house.
We reminded ourselves then that one of Tiffany's dads grew up in a house this size with 9 kids. It could happen. Okay, maybe 9 couldn't happen. After all, their little house was surrounded by farm land that could feed all those hungry mouths. Over the years, it's become clear that we're not welcoming a new child into our lives every other year, like Tiffany's grandma and grandpa did. We've had to readjust to a new daydream and we've become quite happy with the vision of our family being smaller than we originally thought about.
Still, when we considered adoption, we were counseled to just be open to what comes our way. That has taken on a lot of new meaning over the past few months and yesterday we were open again to the chaos that three new family members would bring into our quiet home. We received quite a shock to the system and spent the afternoon making sure we could say "yes" before we actually did.
This is a printout of a seismograph. It measures accelerated ground motion (to those of us who studied the stuff), or earthquakes (to the rest of you). Sometimes, the jolts are significant and unique in a relatively calm line leading up to and away from the event of the earthquake. However, sometimes you can see that the earth was shifting in its seat for a bit afterwards, these are the reported aftershocks. With earthquakes, it's the aftershocks that send people into a panic because they've just lived through the terror of the full jolt. Each time the ground shifts a little more, there's another wave of "oh my goodness, here it comes again" that rushes in when all of the shelter around them is still vulnerable.
After realizing that we were ready to dive in to the family we thought about so long ago, we scheduled a call to meet with our agency last night to get our questions answered. Our mistake was that we overlooked that the time we were available after work coincided with the last presidential debate, not significant for us since our minds are already made up on that front. (It's nice to know where we stand with at least one decision in our lives.) Instead of being available for a call, the agency sent us more information on the little ones in waiting. Unfortunately, they have lived a hard life so far and that is playing out in their behavior and their health. This just wasn't the match we were ready for after all.
While we considered the additions to our family, we reminded ourselves repeatedly that we're still reeling from a humongous shock to the very core of our beings. We were steadying ourselves and dreaming of more hope to come. We remain open, and that means we're going to suffer through some aftershocks.
