So we have a difficult morning today.  I saw our boy go down hill the last 4 days and there was nothing I could do about it. He was starting to get very rude, would not speak to us, would answer us only by head shake or a mumble. He’s just not pleasant to be around.  We try and not let it influence our time together as a couple, meal time can still be cozy and fun right? Just because he is not pleasant, it doesn’t mean the rest of the family can’t have a pleasant time.  Yes, Tim and I have learned a lot in a short time 😉 .

The one thing we do is hold up a mirror to him the best way we can:  “We notice you are moving into your little self.  You are not as talkative, and you are being pretty rude.  Something is going on and you probably do not even know what yourself. That’s okay.  Know we are here, but also know there are some people you can call.  You don’t have to do this alone.  And we do need you to watch your attitude a bit, you always have a choice.  Let us help you make wise choices in that.”

This behavior has everything to do with bonding issues, adjusting issues, fear, and it’s the result of a very rocky past.  I don’t think our boy does any of this intentionally.  He needs it to cope.  It’s sad to witness, it’s sad to be a bystander and not being able to fix this for him.  And in that I realize we do much, we do all we can.

We try to not take anything personal (VERY hard for someone like me), we try not to respond in our emotion and anger is very useless since it doesn’t help us move forward.  My nature wants to punish, after all, he is being so very disrespectful but it’s not what he needs.  Sure we have boundaries, but with the help of professionals we also prefer to look at his circumstances.  He is a boy from hard places!  That makes we can’t respond in ways that one would probably do with biological children.

It gets tiring.  It’s draining.  It’s not fun.  And it causes me to reach out to friends all the time.  And when Tim and I spoke last night we mentioned how none of this feels good, still we know God has called us.  We trust God’s heart and we move along. God is not a God about making us feel good, He may have a way deeper plan for our life, and for a life within our life. So we move close to God, and we pray to God that this boy will find us.

My reminders for moments of crises:                                                                                                                                            1.  Do not take things personal.                                                                                                                                                      2.  Do not respond in anger.                                                                                                                                                          3.  Do not respond in any emotion.                                                                                                                                                4.  Walk away from the situation when the going gets really tough.  Let it be! till a talk can take place, even if that isn’t till days from now.                                                                                                                                                                                5.  Pretend it’s not there and continue on with life.  We all know it’s there, we just can’t let it set the stage for our day, our marriage or our home.  There is life besides a crises.  There is life during a crises!  This also takes off pressure of our boy by the way.  He doesn’t feel he’s the center, it gives him some space and it helps him move out of ‘it’.  All the while continuing our love for him and we continue to serve him: wishing him a great day at school with a happy voice, putting out snacks for him to take to school are some examples.  We do not withdraw from him in a time like this.                                                     6.  When the time to talk presents itself, share about how we felt during the crises.  We can be honest about our feelings and experiences.  This also opens up our boy’s eyes that he’s not the only one in this.

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Remember me writing about life having changed?  For more reason than one I just have not been able to write till now.  And it’s time.  I can’t wait to be here and tell all the stories and tell of all that is happening in the now because, boy, LOTS is happening.  Life is crazy.

On our first date, the day we met, Tim and I discussed lots of important topics right away.  And at some point in the conversation Tim asked if I wanted children.  I was affirming that desire 😉 .  He then asked me: “What about adoption? Would you ever consider adopting?”  And I shared with him how I have always been very interested in adoption, and foster care for that matter.  At some point in Holland I even got the foster care process going.  I was older, I was single, and I didn’t just want to wait around for a husband.  What if he never came?  And in the middle of that process God showed me I was walking ahead of Him, it wasn’t my time to care for children in that way just yet and so I had to let it go.

When Tim and I married we knew we wanted to look into foster care and adoption, and after 6 months of marriage we became curious about it and started to investigate.  I wanted to know the options and I wanted to get an understanding of the US system and oh my, what a system.  Very different from the system in Holland.  I found many websites portraying children who needed a family. This is going to sound crueI, but at some point I felt one can ‘just shop’ for a child on line.  I couldn’t believe my eyes, what a sad reality.  In that research we came across a boy, a boy who, for some reason, stood out.  There was just something about him.  Then we visited a good friend of ours and we told her about where we were at with all this. Our friend is a social worker and this is her line of work and crazy enough we found out this boy was in her case load.  We heard a bit about him and at the same time… we felt the timing wasn’t right.  We had only been married for 6 months and gone through so many changes: I had just made this big move across the ocean and we were learning to do life together. We needed time to build a good foundation together before adding to our family.  We let ‘it’ go.  At the same time this boy was always on our mind and we started to pray for him daily causing him to become part of our heart.

Last summer, we got a phone call… about this boy.  He needed a family, a forever family this time.  Did we want to pursue this?  Tim and I had started to look at agencies to pursue foster care and adoption, it was still on our heart.  We also knew the boy we were praying for had found his family so this phone call, a year and a half after learning about him, was not expected.  We were excited from the get go, but also concerned.  Now it was time to really figure out if we were sure about any of this.  This boy (but any child from the system) has such a past, did we really want to do this?  It is going to get very hard.  We have such a good life, a wonderful marriage… do we want to mess with all that goodness?

We moved forward anyways and we were curious to see where God would take us.  We firmly believed God would do what was best for this boy, and us.  To be honest, we were not sure we were the best for this boy (who were we to think that we would be the best) and we wanted the best for him.  Only God knew how to match this boy so we just trusted His plan and outcome as we moved forward.   In that sense we were very relaxed.

And then things moved crazy fast.  Within weeks we found a house, where we had been looking for a year without any succes.  Within weeks we found the perfect agency for us, an agency who was even willing to work with us and our weird situation of already having a child in mind.  Lastly, the required (and time consuming) home study usually takes about 3 to 6 months and we completed it in a month or so.  We believe God was all over this, opening doors to pave the way.  We also started to pursue this boy in bigger ways.  We were constantly in touch with the people who worked hard to find this boy a home.  We kept sending them more information about us, about where we lived, about what this boy’s life would look like once he moved.  We shared about having connected with what would be his school, we sorted out where he could play soccer and basketball, we had therapy lined up, and the list goes on.  We even got bold and started to tell them why we would be a good match.  We have no other children in the home and it seemed this boy would benefit from that.  No one in our home grew up in the States so even thought we are white, we all are a bit out of place.  The fact that Tim grew up in Africa was a huge plus, since this boy is originally from Africa.  The fact that we have a busy life was a good thing too, we are not the sit around home kind of people.  We were still okay for God to take ‘it’ all away, but slowly we started to believe we were the right match and we did want to do this.

And at some point we were asked to meet this boy’s team (guardian, social worker, adoption recruiter and so so).  They were ready to move forward with us and so we traveled to this boy’s state.  When the meeting was successful the team arranged for us to meet the boy that week.  But we were told to better be very sure, because there was no turning back after meeting him.  And we agreed, no child should go through a ‘check you out if I am sure’ process.  We were either in or out, and by this time we had been sure for a while.

The details of meeting the boy are for another time.  Let’s just say that after getting some time with the boy, the boy was sure too.  This boy is 13 years old, which means he gets a big say in moving forward and his yes is required.  A few weeks later we were officially matched.  And from then on we worked on getting to know one another, asking questions back and forth, building relationship.  And all this had to happen over Skype since we were too far away.  We even started starting family counseling, over Skype 😉 .  This was REALLY happening, the boy would move to PA to become our boy.

To be continued…

PS: We are not allowed to share our boy’s name or photos at this point.  It’s just the law 😉

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