When Eddie and I started this process of adoption we also unknowingly signed on for official posts at the question/answer police headquarters. I suppose it’s something to expect when you have people in your life that care about you and want to know what’s going on – it’s just – when you find yourself answering the same questions multiple times, some of them with very difficult and long answers, you start to think about these questions in a different light. I am convinced that every question we’ve ever received has been asked out of a heart of love us and care for what we’ve been up to and will be up to in building our family. Yet at times having to answer for concerns that are not normally asked during a pregnancy can make you begin to wonder why everyone feels the need to know, to be satisfied that somehow we’ve thought things through and it’s all going to be alright – and that is the beginning of some pretty ugly bitterness and self doubt that drains a soul in a process like this.
I’m writing this to get some of that out of my system and stop it from ever growing into something bigger than just a beginning. I want to answer some of the most common questions and some of the hardest.
(but seriously, after that large explanation, I am grateful for all your questions : ) You guys keep us on our toes and you keep us feeling very loved. We are both so grateful for the support of all our friends and family, and even strangers who make our day with a smile and a word of encouragement. I am so very grateful for the way this baby is being loved even before it arrives!!)
Question 1:
Don’t you want to have your own kids?
This question was asked in many different forms when Eddie and I first announced that we were having trouble having children on our own and had subsequently decided to adopt. This form was probably the most blunt, but I think it points most directly to the fear/concern behind the asker. Yes! We totally wanted to have our own kids – we actually had not thought for a second about adoption when we made our little requests for a child known to God as we practically whispered to each other,
‘I think we should start trying to get pregnant’
‘….ok’.
(P.S. Eddie was the one that wanted it first!) We tried for over a year before we went in to a Kaiser Fertility Clinic.
We kept this portion of our lives fairly hidden – at least the details – for a long time and I’m glad we did. There was no need to pull public opinion on this one, just the two of us talking with God about what to do next. Unlike some fertility issues that you can never quite put your finger on, ours was made apparent within about a 3 month span from our first contact with a receptionist at the Kaiser office to the last in a private meeting with a fertility specialist. We did ultimately have to make a decision between going through with IVF (and if you don’t know what that is you can look it up cause I’m not going to explain it on here) or adoption to have children. The question seemed to center here: just because we can, does it mean we should? It took us a long time. About 6 months of waiting, praying, keeping conversations light so we didn’t argue, or worse, come to a standstill in disagreement about our future.
In the end it was fairly simple, one direction seemed to become less and less a thing that we could picture ourselves doing and the other seemed to be something we became increasingly excited about. We let go of old visions for our life and children, we let go of the fear of the unknown and we embraced a totally new idea of family that God had put in our path. We want to have kids – we want to have the kids God gives us, however they may come, and we couldn’t be more sure about that!
More questions to come…..
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