A Stitch in Time...

Just three more documents needed for our home study and we will be done!

Why is it taking so long? (We ask this question too!) Well, the dear postal service lost two forms and we had to get Bulgaria’s clearance on how to meet one of the requirements. But we have now cleared everything up and the forms are being re-sent and worked upon! We are almost finished.

Working out an adoption is like pulling teeth, herding cats, and saying “She sells seashells by the seashore” three times really fast, while patting your head and rubbing your tummy. If you go really, really slowly and concentrate really hard, you might get it right the first time. But if a ball drops, you just have to get right back on your horse, and back into the swing of things.

We learned in our adoption education about how a child may be a certain age, but in reality have the maturity of a much younger child – physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. They even gave us a ratio to help us figure out the “real” age of our coming kiddo – that for every three months a child spends in the orphanage, he or she loses one month of growth/development. This means that a two-year-old child would be more like a baby that is one year and three months old. If you went by the actual age, you would be potty training, singing songs, working on social skills, etc.  But you can’t do that with children delayed by institution care. They lack the skills – physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially – to do things that a two-year-old child that has been lovingly cared for would do. You need to parent your two-year-old as you would a one-year-old. A five-year-old child that has spent its entire life in an orphanage would have the maturity of a three-year-old. You would have a three-year-old child that had been alive for five years and needs the things a three-year-old would need.

In the child development class I took in college, they never mentioned that you needed love to grow. Food, water, shelter, even security, but love was never mentioned as a basic need. These orphanages provide food (at least enough to keep the kids alive – most of the time anyway), water (once again, sometimes only enough to keep the kids alive – but I have heard that some orphanages feed the kids a watery meal, like soup or gruel or formula, and that is all the liquid they get for the day), shelter, and clothes to wear, etc. But the children are completely missing one basic need – there is no loving, one-on-one care that will make a child grow and thrive. As a result, they lag behind.

I love my child. Ian loves our child. We pray and long to hold him or her in our arms. With each month that goes by, I know my child is not receiving the care, the love, he or she needs to live and grow. As time goes by, our child is falling farther and farther behind. It really grieves me. We need to get our child home – as soon as possible. Every day, we balance this urgency with the need to do this adoption right – the whole mixed metaphor mentioned above.  We balance our faith that God is taking care of our child with actions that will bring our child to us as soon as possible.

One more metaphor… a stitch in time saves nine. For all you non-sewing people out there, let me explain. Suppose you have a beautiful new coat and are anticipating a winter of warmth – and you look so cool in it as well – it is the very latest fashion. You wear it a day or two, and love it! But the next morning, when you are struggling to put it on as you rush out door you hear a rip – the sound of snapping threads. “EEeek! Not my new coat!” you say. You take it off and, yes, there, right in the armpit – a very teeny tear – just a couple of stitches loose really. “No one will notice, I will fix it when I get home!” you say and rush off. No one notices and you forget that it even happened. You wear and wear your beautiful coat, until one day, when you are hailing a taxi, you feel a cold breeze sneak in and, there, it all its ugliness, is a tear of mammoth proportions – how could it have become so big without your notice?!? You keep your arm down for the rest of the day and once you get home, you get out your sewing kit and ugh, what a task! So many seams are affected and the lining is torn too! You sew and sew, and finally you are done – but it looks like an ugly scar. Better keep your arm down until you can buy a new coat.

Now if the tear had been taken care of when it was only a couple of threads, the new coat would have stayed new and beautiful and lasted longer. This is why a lot of people will adopt only infants – the “tears” are smaller and easier to fix. This is also why we feel the need to adopt a child with lots of mending needed – children are not coats and the tears in their lives cannot be fixed with just a sewing kit, and, most importantly, you cannot just go out and get a new one due to some devastating tear. These children are little souls that need healing. How will this happen? As corny as it sounds, love will be our needle and thread. And not just our love, but God’s love – the only love that not only heals wounds but heals ugly scars too.