In the last little while, some of my teen kids have said things like this: Can you imagine what life would be like if we hadn’t adopted…….if we had stopped with….(insert name). My teens are living interesting lives. More time away from home and with friends, focusing on leaving the nest rather than living in the nest, etc. Tonight it came up again. Our number 4 has significant ADHD and life with her is like living in a tornado. All the time. My 15yr old son tonight said, I think if we hadn’t adopted, life would have been…..cleaner.
It’s true. Our house is a disaster all the time. Mostly it is because our number 4 moves through the house at lightning speed, playing, searching , living really fast. I cannot keep up. I clean my house, I do. I cannot clean it faster than she spills, creates, explores and explodes room after room……
Truth says that if we had just stopped before our adopted kiddos came to our family, things would have been much cleaner. We would be able to afford things we cannot afford. We would not be stressed. But, truth also says (and I shared this with my teen son tonight) that if we had not said “yes” to adoption, we would be much more focused on our sense of self. We may not care as much for the lost and broken, the fatherless, the orphan, the child in foster care, the hurting. We may just have been so proud of ourselves and our comfortable world that we didn’t notice. Our truth says that God lead us down a path that is less easy…..less comfortable…..less typical. We struggle here. We balance love and pain and loss and some regret and lots and lots of grace. We have a messy house and stained carpet and broken lamps and we have to share bedrooms and we don’t get to go on vacation every year. That is our truth. That is the life God called us to and that is who we are.
Teen son heard my heart and said, “yep” and sat down to help work on a 1000 piece puzzle that we set up on our dining room table this weekend. We have to eat our meals in the margins because we have decided to try fix this puzzle before Monday morning. In a quiet way, weekends are sacred here…..we do less, we stay home, we press in rather than out. Weekends are exhausting for this mama. I cannot wait for Mondays when everyone leaves again for high school, grade school, preschool, work, daycare……and I can reclaim some of my space here……but for now, on the weekend…..we see how crowded and chaotic it is. We move around each other. We tolerate each other. We love each other. We fix the puzzle. We strive to heal from the wounds of our week……..we share life here……..
Truth says that we are better because we chose a path of adoption. We are not calmer or richer or more settled. We are not even wiser….but we are a better sense of who we are….and we are open and willing to love and to open our door and our hearts whenever God knocks.
