Dear Life,
Adoption. My husband and I always thought adoption was
an amazing thing. For other people. We have five beautiful boys, and our plate is
full. Our oldest is eighteen and our
youngest is almost six. We have battled
ADD with our oldest son and are currently on quite a journey with our youngest
son who has Spina Bifida. You can read
about him HERE.
When we were in the beginning stages of this
journey called Spina Bifida, we were often overwhelmed, and felt grateful that
Kumaka came at the end of our little family because there were times we felt
like we never would have had any other kids had he been first. As he gets older, we have become wiser, we
have learned to be patient, to deal with the fact that we are not in control of
his health. We have learned to roll with
the punches. Although we never ever like
seeing our baby in pain or suffering in any way, there are times when we feel
like we have been truly blessed because of Spina Bifida.
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We have seen miracles,
we have met amazing people, and our little man brings us so much joy every
single day. His smile brightens even the
gloomiest day.
One day I asked my husband if he would ever
consider adoption. He looked at me and
said of course. I was a little surprised
he so readily agreed that he would consider it.
Still, we never really thought we even qualified for being adoptive
parents. Hello, my husband is 52, we
have five kids, and let’s face it….we are not wealthy people. So yes, we both felt like it was something we
would do, but it wasn’t something we felt we would be able to do. One day I was looking at an agency, at some
of the kiddos , and I thought I would just contact them and find out what the
criteria was to adopt a little girl with Spina Bifida. It wouldn’t hurt to ask, right? The agency was so nice, and the lady I spoke
with sent me pictures of a few girls that had Spina Bifida. (Here is where I confess this ISN’T the
first time I had perused various websites, saddened by these children in orphanages all
over the world.) As I clicked open to
look at the pictures, one sweet little girl with huge brown eyes and brown hair
stared out at me and I literally bawled.
I showed my husband her picture and he too fell in love. When we looked at other websites, we felt
saddened but never felt pulled like we were at that moment. I emailed our contact person and asked what
exactly the criteria were…and told her all of our “issues” (age, amount of
kids, etc.). After I listed my concerns,
she told me that we still qualified. We
were over the moon excited…and terrified at once. We felt very strongly that we were prompted
to find this sweet girl. We both feel
like we have been blessed with knowledge, love, and the ability to help another
child living with Spina Bifida live life
to the fullest. We felt so strongly that
although Spina Bifida is the hardest challenge our family has ever been
through, it has also been a blessing in many ways. How could we be so blessed and not help
another child who just needs a family, love, and support? The only way we can show Heavenly Father how
grateful we are for His love, for the blessings He has given us is to help at
least one of His children. Kumaka was
born into a family while Sofi was taken to the orphanage. It is heartbreaking to think about these
children wasting away…because in other countries children with disabilities are
not considered worth living. This sweet
girl has the right to be loved, to have a forever family. She has the right to
have the best medical care available to her.
She has the right to have five big brothers love her and adore her. Sofi
hasn’t smiled yet, she hasn’t spoken yet and she’s three years old. We decided we could help Sofi smile, we could
be her forever family.
We decided to go forward with the
adoption. We sent papers to the country
in August…and every single day for a month we held our breath to see if the
court would find us a worthy family…and allow us to be her parents. They gave us the green light. Now we are in the crazy busy fundraising
madness. It costs approximately $30,000
with travel fees. We don’t have that
kind of money lying around…so we are trying to be creative about raising
money. We have raised a little over
$1000. We look at each thousand as a
goal. We only have 30 goals. We have met one. So we are basically 1/30th of the
way done. We have sent $700 to our
agency for the initial paperwork fees.
We are now officially in the program.
Now we need to come up with $9000 to cover the various fees that come up
while filing papers as well as pay for our Home Study. Although it’s stressful to think about the
money…and how we’re going to come up with it all, we have already seen
miracles. People have stepped up to
become angels to help us bring home Sofi.
We have seen people donate money and we don’t even know who they
are. Our community has rallied behind
our little Sofi. An article was written
on our local magazine, Fountain Valley Living, and three fundraisers have been
planned, one of them being an $1800 diamond heart pendant that was CREATED for
this event by one of the local jewelers to raffle off. A dear friend who is a photographer is doing
mini sessions next week and 100% of the proceeds are going towards Sofi’s
adoption. Who does that? I am so in awe by the amount of people who
have come together, and shown us LOVE.
That’s what the world needs to see more of….that is what will change the
world. We love Sofi, and we truly cannot
wait to bring her home.
Our
boys are excited to have a sister (of course after their initial chagrin about the
fact that she was a girl…they are so used to it being a boys world). We talk about Sofi a lot, and we ask them
questions all the time. We asked Kumaka
the other day where Sofi will sleep. He
said she will sleep in her bed…in his room.
Kumaka likes “sandwich” hugs. I
asked him where Sofi would be in the hug sandwich. He said “I will be on this side by daddy, and
she will be on that side by mommy, and then we make a sandwich”. Adorable, right? Kumaka told me he would teach her how to
talk, and he would take her to physical therapy with him. He told me he would take care of her when she
has to go to the hospital. I love the fact
that he is so willing to take care of her.
This
journey will take a year, and I’m sure we will face challenges along the
way. But bringing home this sweet angel
is well worth it. Once she is here, we
will have another set of challenges. We
know that we will be okay….that God has brought us here and He will be there
for us throughout the journey.
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