Change of Heart (Part 2)

As promised, I am continuing with the second crazy event of last week.  I know, I know.  You were all hanging on the edges of your seats.  (That's sarcasm.  Too bad you can't convey tone of voice through text.)

Two.

We went to an informational meeting at an adoption agency in Oklahoma City last Thursday.

Back up.  I have always said that I wanted to adopt, but never for the right reasons, and always with a long list of conditions attached.  Really, I didn't want to adopt at all.  Here are some of the things that were running through my head:

-Adoption, especially international adoption, has too often become "the cool thing" that all "good" people do.  I wanted to be cool and good, so I "wanted" to adopt.  I wanted to check something off of my list of things that Christians do to earn their way into the heart of God.  And I wanted our children to be trophies that people observed and said, "Those are the most selfless, patient, perfect parents out there."

-I wanted to be a "rescuer" as an adoptive parent, not a mom.

-Let's have our "own" kids first, then we can adopt.  As an afterthought.

-If we start the adoption process, we will get pregnant on our own.  That's what everyone says.

-Our children need to look like us.

-I'm sure I would love our adopted child, but probably never as much as if we had had biological children.

-I only want a baby.  Not an older child, and definitely not one with any sort of disabilities.

-I don't think I'll ever be okay with never being pregnant.

-Adoption is for couples who are failures.  They can't get pregnant on their own, so they are forced to choose the next best option.  

I know many couples think about these things, and not every one of the items on the list above is necessarily wrong.  But they were all wrong for me.

***

The change started on our trip to Peru in March, when the little faces at the Hogar de Esperanza ("Home of Hope") orphanage became real to me and I pictured some of them in our family one day.  What had once been a distant idea became a very present possibility.  Suddenly, it didn't matter to me that those kids looked nothing like us.  It didn't matter that they were not babies, or that some of them had disabilities.  What mattered is that a family is a family, regardless of where the individual members come from, and that love is more powerful than all types of skepticism and uncertainty.

Even after Peru, I wasn't sure that adoption was a real option for us.  It can be expensive, and we aren't made of money.  I was ready to adopt a child who didn't look like us, but I still really wanted a baby.  I knew I would love any child who became a part of our family, but I couldn't shake the fact that I would still feel like a failure if we never were able to have biological children.   

I don't know what changed or how.  After the adoption meeting last week, I was, for the first time, excited about adopting.  I really want it to happen, and I don't care if the baby (or five-year-old) is black, white, brown, or purple.  I don't care if it has Down Syndrome.  I don't care about any of that stuff that used to be such a big deal.  That child would be ours, and we would never know anything different. I no longer think of myself as a failure, or even a "rescuer," when I think of being an adoptive parent.  I think I would be most richly blessed and humbled.

All of that said, the struggle with infertility is still a long, hard road some days.  As much as I now truly want to adopt, I would also love to give birth to a child.  For anyone reading this who is dealing with infertility, you know as well as I do that there is nothing anyone can say to make the hurt go away even a little bit.  I'm not attempting to do that.  But just the fact that I am posting this, quite honestly, is a huge reason for hope- hope that even the hardest of hearts can come around.  There is hope that love wins.  On days when I battle to believe in God's goodness and existence, I think of how far he has brought me, especially in this matter.  Because I sure didn't bring about the change in myself.

Adoption isn't for everyone, but I'm becoming more and more convinced that it is for us.  That, my friends, is crazy.