So, Here's What Happened

I spent 20 years making excuses - most of them were very valid.  My past has been no picnic and I pretty much managed to convince myself that I really wouldn't make a very good mommy for a little girl.  I was swimming in testosterone - a husband and three sons, even the cat and the horse were guys. I knew how to live there, I was comfortable.

So, I'd sort of put this idea of adoption on the back-burner.

 "Let's just see where life takes me."

If it was meant to be, I think that I really expected some cute little girl to crawl up into my lap and say, "Hi! I need a mommy!"

The short version is that after three sons and working REALLY hard to become emotionally fit,(see old blog, 6 Months and Counting Down (Up) to Forty )  my 40th birthday was coming up fast.

40 is an awesome year, it's "the middle."  It's the point at which you can say, "OK, I've lived some life, I have some life left to live.  I still have time to do some stuff. What will I regret not doing?"  So, I upped the volume of that old adoption tune and allowed it to move to the forefront of my mind.  It had been playing there for years as background music but now was the time to decide. I wanted to either do it or quit thinking about doing it.

OK A,  You have to either do this or decide not to -commit yourself to doing it or let it go, grieve it and move on.

I was about to turn 40, I had a 15 yo son, a 5 yo son and a 3 yo son, and I tried to imagine myself at the end of my life without that daughter.  Suddenly, the idea crescendo-ed inside my heart. Yes, I want to do this!  It literally hurt to think of coming to the end of my life and not having her.

I was instantly totally and completely terrified.

When, as one social worker put it, "your past has been...complicated,"  you do NOT want to have other people picking through it.  And for international adoption, they PICK and pick and pick. Each country formulates their own rules and regulations about age of parents, finances, kids allowed in the home, history of parents, etc, etc, etc. But first, you have to get through your state's guidelines (and we moved in the middle of the process, so I've had to make TWO states happy.)

I've, literally, been fingerprinted four or five times, I can't keep track.

To have someone come peek into my past, come into my  home and witness the way that we live, interview my kids and my husband about our relationships, look into the corners of my house which I KNOW are sticky and dusty...  SHEESH!! It feels like a nightmare. It feels like JUDGEMENT.  If they decide that we're not good enough, will I be okay with that?  Will it color the way that I feel about myself for the rest of my life?

Then, I decided that it didn't matter.  This was where I felt like the path of my life was taking me and I WOULD go there. If it didn't happen, it wouldn't be because of me. THEY would have to take it away. If I tried and failed, I could live with that. I could not live with refusing to try.

But this decision wasn't only mine, I also had a husband who had JUST had a vasectomy and was pretty sure that I'd lost my mind.....THAT was an interesting set of conversations.  :)

He'd finally smiled and said, "Well, my life has certainly been full of adventure since I've met you."

I'd giggled and then I'd emailed the paperwork and the fee to the agency - within DAYS of my 40th birthday.

And, we were on our way -I was biting my fingernails and stressed out, but we were on our way!