Just Beginning

We’ve been working so hard on Givens’ room.  It’s identical to having a new baby and the excitement of setting up the nursery before they arrive.  These projects have kept my mind busy in the slower moments when it is hard not to let that anxiousness creep in over the waiting.  It’s incredibly hard to have a piece of your heart clear across the ocean when you’re just so desperate to have them in your arms.  

I wanted to share with you our progress but I also wanted to share with you a truth.  While we are putting so much time and love into creating a place of G’s own, we are very much aware that his room isn’t important.  We know this process, the planning, the preparing, the paperwork, isn’t just leading up to the end goal of adoption.  Givens’ finalized adoption is not the end of this journey, it’s really just the beginning.  Just as a wedding doesn’t make a marriage, the act of the adoption process doesn’t make a family.  

Our journey will only truly start the day we carry him out of that orphanage.  A boy who will be taken away from everyone and everything he’s ever known.  He may be afraid of us.  He may push us away.  This might last a long time, years even. Or forever.  We know that he may always deal with trauma.  He may self-harm, have breakdowns we don’t understand, not let us console him, have aversions to things that make life more difficult, or …he may not.  He may learn to speak and communicate with us or we may never hear “I love you” or anything at all.  He may fit in with us seamlessly or we might have to work every day for his trust.  He might make swift progress or he might backslide just when we think we’ve gotten somewhere.  Or maybe even both.  

We pray every day for his health and that he would be receptive to us, because we are going into this with eyes wide open, knowing there could be some very very hard days ahead.  I pray that he will want to be touched because that’s where MY instincts go, hugs and kisses and cuddles.  But if he doesn’t, that’s ok too and I will figure it out.  I pray that he cries (because not crying is even worse) but that he doesn’t cry all the time because that’s where Devin struggles, when he can’t fix it.  But if he cries for hours or even days, that’s ok too and Devin will figure it out.  

We know the day we walk him out of his previous life and into our family will change us all and while we hope and pray for the best, we’re prepared for the worst and a pretty bedroom really has no bearing on any of it.  And yet…

We build shelves and sew pendants and buy wall art and paint and design and pour love into his space because EVEN IF raising him is forever hard, we CHOOSE him to be our son.  And we love him with the ferocity that every child deserves to be loved by their parents, not because it is easy, or because he reciprocates, or because his behaviors fit our levels of comfort.  But because he is a child of God, loved beyond measure by our Father, and he was created EXACTLY the way God intended him to be, and he is worthy of abundant love, safety, care and devotion.  

We will continue to pray over him every day (and for the rest of our lives) and have high hopes for our days ahead while continuing to understand that we must meet him where he’s at, and build from there – regardless of where “there” begins.

And in the meantime, I’m going to spend too much time (and money according to Devin!) on decorating his room and filling it with toys and snuggly blankets and stuffies, because it’s what I can do for him now…until the real, and most important moments begin. 

15 days!