Wednesday, January 15, 2014

REAL MOM!

I became a "real" mom this week!  No one can understand how happy that makes me.  I have always wanted to be the real mom. 
Adoption is a weird thing.  It is not anything I can explain to someone who has not adopted.  I went into it blind and I have been very educated in the past 8 years.  Over the past month Mark and I have been taking adoption classes.  I think in all we have spent about 30 plus hours taking classes. As I have sat and taken these classes I have learned a lot about many different aspects of this process. The first time around we had to read books and basically give them a list of what we read.  I think I read about 8 books.  None by the way helped me prepare at all.  This time around it is webinars.  I love a webinar.  Honestly, I do.  You can take them in your jammies with head phones on or not and really take notes comfortably.  What an amazing gift the Internet has given us.  I have learned from these classes that we basically handled Flo's adoption all wrong when it came to attachment and discipline, etc.   We did it all the opposite of what we should have done, but there is always room for improvement.  So here we are eight years later and I am still trying to figure it all out.

Anyway, we have really been talking a lot about Sweet Boy and the adoption and things we can and cannot say to brother.  How to deal with brother and things like that. 
We have been in deep conversations over the past year about biological moms and birth moms and real moms.  That has been a major topic at our house since Flo turned 8.  We have a close friend that put up a child for adoption as a teen and in the past few years she met her daughter and her family and has formed a relationship with her. Our friend shared her story in a religious magazine and since reading that magazine all kinds of questions and answers have come up about that. At the time I had no issue with Flo reading the article.  In hindsight, I should have read it with her the first time instead of  letting her read it and then her asking me questions and then us reading over it again together.  Anyway, she got this idea that her mother in China would be just like my friend.  That everything would work out just like her story and we would all be one happy family.  I have spent months and months trying to explain to her in a way that she would understand that it may just not work out that way. China adoption is different than the United States. Nobody keeps records of biological parents there.  I really just tried every way I knew how to let her know it just might not happen that way. 

With all of my new found webinar adoption knowledge I have tried to make her understand more and more that this is permanent.  We can't change her circumstances, but when she graduates from High School I will take her on a heritage tour.  When we do that, if she wants to put up posters where she was found I will do that with her.  I will do it for her and for her heart.  I know she really wants to know about her extended family and a part of me really understands it.  Another part of me does not want her to hurt and there is no way to know if that will happen.  It is painful to think about.  I love her so much and I know this pains her heart, but the answers she seeks could be more painful. 

This week we have had several heart-to-heart talks about this topic and brother and his family in China and where he was found etc.  I explained to her what we can and can't discuss with him until he is much, much older.  We were talking about something today and she said my "real" mom.  I said, "Oh".  I then asked her a question about the "real" mom and she said, "You are my real mom!"  And she said it like -Duh, you should know that. It never occurred to me until that moment she was really talking about me.  She has been saying real mom to refer to her biological mom for about a year now.  Each time she said it I never corrected her I just said biological mom or birth mom when I was part of the conversation.  I was taken aback.  I did not know really what to say!  I think she figured that out because she came and hugged me and she told me how much she was glad I was her "real" mom!  I will take that title all day long because it has been a long year and there have been a lot of tears.  I am grateful to God for her and for the words she said today!  She will never know how much that meant to me and I don't care if she ever says it again.  I just needed to hear it once.  I will be whatever mom  she wants me to be for the rest of her life.  I love her with my whole heart and then some. "Thank you Lord for this gift!"

So, no matter how overwhelmed I feel about this process God gives me little boosts to let me know it is for His Glory.  Our son will come home in the end and he will be ours forever.  Maybe just maybe some day I can be his "real mom" too!

1 comment:

  1. Beautiful!!! I have tears in my eyes reading this post!

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