2 weeks home...what is life like?

I think I missed the last blog post about the fact that we are home now! Sometime maybe I'll fill in on all of those details, but for now I feel like blogging about the present (for once).

Looking back even though our 9 weeks in country was extremely stressful and our days were filled with adoption paper chasing, I can see now that the time together was special and it was great to have that time to bond and attach before coming home.

One of the things we knew we wanted to do after coming home was to keep their world small. We are staying close to home, having no visitors inside the house, and letting them see that we are their primary caretakers. For so long they have missed out on these things that our biological children have always known. They have security in knowing that there is always food and a bed to sleep on and a mommy and daddy that is always here. So for now, we are the only ones that bathe them, we are the only ones that feed them, and we are the only ones that they are allowed to hug or kiss. Basically no one besides us should be meeting their basic needs. All of this seems so extreme, but it's really not when we think about where they came from, a very hard place.

Jen Hatmaker has a really good blog post called "after the airport" where she talks about their transition coming home and being a family. She says:

"If you are intrigued by the idea of adoption, with the crescendoing storyline and happy airport pictures and the sigh-inducing family portrait with the different skin colors and the feely-feel good parts of the narrative, please find another way to see God's kingdom come. You cannot just be into adoption to adopt; you have to be into parenting. And it is hard, hard, intentional, laborious work. Children who have been abused, abandoned, neglected, given away, given up, and left alone are shaken so deeply, so intrinsically, they absolutely require parents who are willing to wholly invest in their healing; through the screaming, the fits, the anger, the shame, the entitlement, the bed-wetting, the spitting, the rejection, the bone-chilling fear. Parents who are willing to become the safe place, the Forever these children hope for but are too terrified to believe in just yet."

So how AM I DOING? I'm remembering that God is with me in the madness and that He is for me, He is for us, and He loves adoption. We're expecting this first year to just be full of transition and this summer may always be known as the forgotten summer. So for now we hunker down in the house and remember that this time we're dedicating to all FOUR kids will be so worth it!