Wednesday, January 06, 2010

More Ups and Downs

We made it through another holiday season. One son came home for a birthday party for our granddaughter and a few hours on another night. Our youngest called my wife, a couple of times, though the contact seems very abbreviated. My wife did very well until the end of the holidays, when the strain finally started to leak out. She is fine now, but the rejection is hard to handle.

You certainly don't start the adoption process expecting this, but you really need to prepare for it. It is almost worse than the struggles we faced when they were teenagers. What happened to being the "forever family" that everyone promises? Adoptive parents need that as much as children do.

As a Christian, I don't anything happens by chance. God was certainly not surprised by what happened. Evidently, He feels I can make it through this, so I will. Even if I never get the family I expected, I will know I have changed the lives of four individuals for the better. They would have had a much tougher life without the involvement of my wife and I.

That doesn't make this easy. We still have to walk through the emotions and rejection. So be it. We can honestly say we did the best we could and that is all that can legitimately be expected.

Brad

2 comments:

Z is for Ramble said...

wow, your blog is INCREDIBLY depressing (just read through most of it). im so sorry you did not get a real family out of this deal.

Ive always wanted to adopt sibling groups, which is how I found your blog...and this is certainly sobering. I wish there WERE more resources availible to post-adoptive families.

Can I ask how old your children were when you adopted? I wonder if that effected the outcome?It sounds like they were all real close in age too...

Well maybe if I adopt 9 kids or so, one or two will "stick."

Again, very sorry for your experience.

Brad Andrews said...

I would have to agree with you that it sucks Z, though I do believe this is a more accurate picture than many out there. That said, it is quite possible that we did many things wrong and missed a lot of clues that would have helped us turn out better.

At the least, I hope my ramblings here ultimately help people who do choose this route. The need remains very great, though it is a route with many mines!

Feel free to comment on other posts and let me know what you would like to see. At some point, I may even setup a support group. A group, based at http://www.radzebra.org can be very helpful with a supportive group and information, but local support is still a missing thing for many of us.

Of course we didn't think we needed such support until things got pretty nasty. It is actually much better now, though the emotional ride is much more difficult now. Having your son view someone as his sister who is not even related by blood to him (a step-birth sibling?) and not you, who went through the really hard years, is really tough.

I definitely can see at least some of how the father of the prodigal son felt in the Biblical story. :)

Brad