Give1Save1 Day 3: Revelation and Heartbreak

You are there! You finally made it to referral.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term as it applies to the adoption process, referral is the time where your agency/lawyer matches you with a child - or in our case two children.  For most people there is a long wait between the time you get your documentation approved and the time when you actually get to see your child's face for the first time.  It is hard to just sit around and wait, and just like in a pregnancy before the first time you get to see your child (whether via ultrasound or in the flesh), while you wait the anticipation builds.

What will it be like when I see them for the first time?  Will I love them right away?  Will it be a boy or a girl?  What do I need to know to parent them right and how do I learn it?  Those were all questions I asked during each pregnancy while I waited and waited for something to happen.  Adoption is the same way before the referral - you don't really know much about the child you will see when it happens, so you question everything.  And with adoption, you just add more questions like: What will I do if it is a sibling group?  What should I be doing to raise money to pay for this whole process?  How will I deal with raising a special needs child (I would include all children with traumatic backgrounds in this group, and sadly most adoptable children fall into that category)?

Then, one day an email will come.  It will have a picture of a child in it and information about the child.  Unlike pregnancy, at least for us, adoption allows you to look at this and say - "No - keep looking".  I frankly never understood this, and maybe that is because of the reasons we are adopting, but I think it has more to do with the type of parents my wife and I want to be.  Every time we were waiting for results of all the tests they run and before they do the ultrasounds to check for defects, we decided that we would love whatever child God gave us.  We had the same attitude when we went into the referral.  We said we would love whatever child God presented us with.

So we move on.  We say yes.  We give our hearts over to loving these children, even if all we know is where they were found and what we can see in a picture.  You start loving them then.  Unfortunately, adoption referrals don't always turn into adopted kids.  Sometimes there are problems.  Sometimes after you give your heart over to loving this child or group of children, you get told there were complications.  You get told their case can't be moved forward with and to start over. It hurts.  It hurts like it hurts when you lose someone you love.  I don't think there are good words for this.  It is heartbreak and more.

Unlike when you lose a child during pregnancy, this process can repeat itself multiple times in short succession.  You are expected to somewhere muster the courage to continue each time.  You have to find a way to move on and to continue loving the next child that is given to you to love, even if it is for such a short time.  You have to find a way to keep faith that eventually the child in the picture will end up being your child, and that time it won't be hurt that you feel.  After all of that, you will be ready to finish the adoption process.  You will be ready to fight for your child.  You will not have doubts.  You will want them home.  You will want to hold them.  And at that point, you have moved on.  Your child has been revealed to you, and you will move into the next phase: Interminable waiting.