February - Training & Homework

We had to attend one meeting with our agency.  Others we looked at had required attendance at several short meetings.  Ours had it all rolled into one 8 hour day.  It was a long day and we were given a lot of information.  But I was so glad we only had to make one 2 hour drive to the home office.  We learned about their different programs, attachment issues, how things with with birthmoms and open adoptions, different parenting issues that may come up and racial issues.  We then had to go home and do 3 hours of online classes.  We chose one about racial issues and one about attachment.  Up until this point I was starting to get excited about adoption.  I didn't mind doing paperwork and I was excited to think we might finally be parents.  I was slowly putting many of fears about adoption to rest and realizing that I was very naive about all things adoption related.  There are just so many myths out there and I didn't know any better than to believe them.  But now I started having doubts.  I cried all the way home from this meeting.  Adoption is so huge.  Someone doesn't just hand you a baby, say congrats and its like you just had your own.  Even infants can have attachment issues, if you are open to different races you may have to deal with others reactions to it, there may be a lack of medical history on the birthparents, your child may have been exposed to drugs or alcohol, you may have a failed adoption where they choose to parent at the last minute, you have to protect their adoption story and share the age appropriate details with them, if its an open adoption you have to arrange visits and send updates and its just so much more complicated than having a biological child.   It takes special people to be involved in adoption, on both sides of it.  And sometimes I don't want to be special, sometimes I just want to be boring and go unnoticed in the background.  So I moped about for several days.  Why did you make me special God?  Why did you call me to do something so important?  What if I fail?  So what if you've been preparing me my whole life for this, maybe I just don't want to.  I'm definetly one of God's whiny children, always complaining about something.  After a few days, I started to work through and accept all that and began to get excited about adoption again.  We got a totally unexpected call from our social worker, ready to set up our first homestudy meeting.