Having Time to Think

Sometimes it just isn't good to have time to think, especially when I'm tired because then they aren't good thoughts.

But Bart, definitely not the village optimist, said something yesterday that gave me some perspective. i was complaining about the stress in our lives and how hard it was raising the kids. He responded, "Yup, it's hard. And I guess the best we can do is to be thankful that our lives are easeir than most of the other adoptive families we know right now." And the sad thing is, that's true.

So with all of my friends suffering through very hard situations because of the behaviors of their children, why am I in Texas trying my best to get a few more families matched with kids who may make their lives so much harder? Because, "It's NOT ABOUT ME!" and it's not about any adoptive parents. It's about kids who did NOTHING WRONG and did not choose to be abused, neglected, abandoned and then re-abused, re-neglected and re-abandoned by a system that moved them too many times and killed any kind of trust they had. It's that those kids deserve to have a second chance. And if the damage is too deep and they never function productively in society at least they will have a few good memories, parents who will advocate for them forever, and a chance to see life from a different perspective, whether or not they make the right choices.

I am sure that you wonder how I can recruit with a blog so real, sometimes so negative, but it is SO much better for parents to head into this realisticallly. Seeing a cute 5 year old on a website that tugs on your heart strings used to work for me. Now I see a 15 year old in 10 years and know the journey will be tough, no matter how young they are when they come. When people talk about a cute little sib group of kids that are 1, 3, 5 and 7 all I think any more is 11, 13, 15, and 17.

But, every day I work my hardest to get the kids home and find families who will commit to them for life. And I'm off to do that today -- to ask social workers to put the children on their caseloads into the homes of families that I work with so that together we can all give the kids the best chance possible.