In the beginning...

I've always wanted a big family.  Always.  Well, maybe not after I had my first child...but that's a whole other story...maybe for another day.  ;)

Last night we left our kids with our friend and headed to our first "real" step towards adoption.  Real.  Pro-active.  We were actually DOING something...which I have come to appreciate because adoption is FULL of waiting and not being able to actually DO anything.   Quite a helpless feeling actually. 

So there we were walking into a building, smiling at the security guard who tells us where to go, walking down the long hallway, hearing chatter from the room as we approach and then entering the room that would begin our journey.  A journey that has absolutely no maps or signs or clues as to how long it will take, what will REALLY be required of you, or how it will actually feel when you are at the finish line.   We don't know what to expect really so we smile at the two other couples and one lady who came without her husband.  We grab a bottle of water.  I meet Ashley who I have been playing phone tag with for what seems like ages.  Ronnie grabs some cookies as I take a seat and all of the sudden the screen is displaying children WE have inquired about.  The very ones we are waiting so anxiously to receive a reply from their case-worker.  The ones we have prayed about, cried about dreamed about.  Ronnie isn't looking at the screen and without a second thought I loudly gasp and say "Ronnie LOOK!"  All eyes are on us now and I realize how akward that must have been.  I quickly apologize and explain that we are inquiring about them and know them.  Every one smiles and in comes Ashley to begin our class. 

I thought I was there to get credit hours and hear things I already knew from the books and websites I have been pouring over.  But after seeing the children that have consumed our thoughts and prayers for months now, I realized this was going to be an emotional class for me.  And only me.....because no-one else in there (other than hubby) seemed effected by what we learned.   But I was deeply effected.  (Effected...Affected....?...I didn't pay attention in English class...hopefully that doesn't disqualify me from this)

The first thing that was said that caught me off guard and quickly opened the flood-gates that always seem so da-gum eager to overflow, was this: 

 "When adoption is complete, it is as if the birth parents never existed, they are removed from the birth certificate and your names are there instead."

WOW.  Even now,  I am crying.  Every time I think of that, I cry.  When I look at the birth certificates of each of my boys it is a reminder of the months I carried them in my body.  The sickness, the soreness and the scars that will be there forever.  The hours I WORKED to bring them into this world and the pain that came with it.  It is a reminder of how we fought for them.  How we worked as a team and experienced some of the most intimate times of togetherness.  And I know when we have the birth certificate of the children we bring into our home through adoption...it will remind me of the same things.  The same but different.  No, I didn't carry them in my body or feel the same kind of aches and pains...but we will have FOUGHT for them.  We will have labored many many hours, worried of the outcome, prepared our home for them,  and anxiously awaited them all the same.  It is just a sheet of paper, yes, but it means the world to me. 

I guess the second thing that really brought the tears to the surface was when they explained the backgrounds of these children.  The abuse and the neglect they experienced.  One case was of a little boy who was left in a play-pen for days on end.  He had little muscle strength and was way behind in every way possible because he had never been HELD or ROCKED or PLAYED WITH or SANG TO or TICKLED or FED.  And I thought about our little boys and how much LOVE they have had in their young lives.  Not just from us.  From grandparents, aunts, cousins...from our church families and friends...they are LOVED.  They feel it.  They count on it...and without knowing it they are forever changed because of it.  And to imagine them having to go through even a small time of not knowing that love.  Or feeling the comfort of someones arms around them as they pray for them and play with them.  It got me.  I can't think of any child out there going without that love.  These things make we want to take in every one of those children and smother them with all the love they have never had. 

***

Now I sit here filling out applications, signing up for classes, creating accounts for each of us on the social services website, planning a time to get fingerprinting done, finding CPR classes, inhaling books and writing book reports, calling and waiting for return calls. 

It's the beginning.  And there is hope for the end.  God is so so good.