Rollercoaster

Adoptions are very much like a rollercoaster. They go up and down and include plenty of turns and twists. For us as parents, it sometimes feels like we are sitting side by side and sometimes like we are on opposite ends of the cart…one might be on a decline and the other still ascending. Emotions are already tricky things and they get all jumbled up in the adoption journey.

We had a final visit with the psychologist today. She was very complimentary and tried to help the kids think through a bit how the court situation will look like next week, when the adoption will become legally official. We will still have some steps after that (like getting passports and such), but we are now more than halfway through our time in Brazil. We have also seen small changes taking place. Little baby steps that are occurring. The rollercoaster ride can seem excruciatingly long at times and we seek to do our best to support each other through it.

One of the big loops with adoption is the feeling on both sides of not being fully embraced or fully accepted. This is something that takes tremendous amount of time and significant effort. It can be exhausting. We can often feel more like babysitters in the early years (and yes, we did write years). It can especially be hard when one person seems to be more attached than another. Interestingly with so many kids, we have seen some kids gravitate more toward one person and some more towards the other. This too has some interesting dynamics that add more ups and downs to the rollercoaster ride.

We are thankful to have taken this journey before, albeit on a very different rollercoaster. This go around we know what to expect in the sense that we know what an adoption rollercoaster is like. But we don’t know exactly how many turns, loops, spins, this one has or the speed at which it will go. So in some ways it is familiar, in other ways it is all brand new. And try as we might to ward off the emotional spins, that is very hard to do when it feels like you are simply being taken on a ride. We also know that emotions can be used as means of temptation and attempts to bring about divisions. Yet, we are thankful that we serve a God who has taught us a lot along the way and who controls all the rollercoasters we are riding. We have made many mistakes in the past, but our God is One who redeems even the worst of mistakes and uses all things for His glory and our ultimate good. So as we are jostled about and thrown around the cart, we endeavor to keep our eyes fixed on Him and to help hold onto each other.