This past Saturday, we went to our adoption and foster care ministry's annual conference. This year was the biggest attendance yet with 650 people! I thought I would unpack some of the conference and its impact on me, over the course of a couple of posts as it is too much to process in one sitting! I will hopefully be able to link the resources from the conference by the end of today as well. This post will focus on the key note speaker,
Sherrie Eldridge. She is the author of several books, most notably
20 Things Adoptive Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew. She spoke for the first hour of the conference and Billy and I sat in on her lunch Q & A session. She speaks from her life as an Adoptee, placed with her parents in the 1940's. She is also an adoptive grandmother and has done extensive research and developed relationships with adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive families. She addressed grief and loss in our adopted children and said she does not ascribe to the belief that all adopted children walk around with an unhealing wound of grief (I totally agree!)She said that working through any issues of grief and loss they feel is the catalyst to experiencing emotional healing. She encourages all adoptive parents to get in the grief with their child, to not deny them information about their birthfamily (at an appropriate age) no matter how hurtful it may be. "It is in the valley of grief that we really bond and attach to our children and them to us," she said. She had an exercise that she suggested we encourage our children to do, I gathered when they were teens or adults as they would need some level of understanding and self awareness. She called it a "Grief and Thanksgiving Box". In it she puts tangible things that remind her of the pain she has suffered in life. Examples were a book of baby faces that reminds her she was called "Baby X" in the hospital for days because her birthmother did not give her a name. The grief there is that she had no identity. She put a picture of her birthmother to represent the loss of her birthfamily and also the fact that later in life, after meeting her, her birthmother rejected her again till the day she died. So in this box are all of these reminders of her hurt. She pulls them out and reflects on the pain, but then she puts each item back in, she turns it around "Thank you, Lord that I was not aborted. That my birthmother gave me life." "Thank you that even though I started out with no identity, my Mom and Dad gave me a home and name and a family." So this box, although it serves as a reminder of all her losses, it also gives her tangible ways to heal those losses through bringing it around as gratitude to her Lord that sustains her and is with her in all of her grief. She said the purpose in this exercise is to understand that present day losses trigger any previous losses a person has experienced. I related to this on such a deep level. I had heard this same phrase in counseling years ago. The counselor told me that if I didn't deal with actually healing all the little hurts individually, that it would be like just putting a band-aid on them and then when a new pain arises, it would just rip off the scab and make it worse. This was very, very true in my life. It seems that in many ways my life has been marked by loss...the loss of deep family bonds and belonging I had always wanted, the loss of a child I was the primary caregiver for, who passed away at the age of 8. The loss of friendships, jobs, cousin relationships. The loss of the ability to conceive, the loss of foster kids, the loss of present day family ties.
Sherrie, the speaker at our conference, seemed to be more injured by the later rejection of her birthmother, than the fact that she was placed for adoption. She said that she was so thankful to have been placed for adoption and to be raised by her mom and dad. But that when after reuniting with her birthmother as an adult, her birthmother suddenly changed and began to bad mouth her and say really cruel things about her. She realized there would be no repairing that relationship. She quoted the Bible, "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you." Isaiah 49:15. I cried as this resonated with me in a personal way. A child needs a mother for a lifetime. A mother who is strong enough to fight for that relationship no matter how they perceive their adult child to be behaving. Present day losses trigger previous losses...
.yes they do. The speaker said that those of us who have experienced some of the worst that life has to offer, gain a perspective that others do not have. No longer can we take for granted that anything is a "given" in life. "Out of very deep hurt we are given the ability to be wounded heroes for others who are grieving. We understand life on a much deeper level."
Sometimes I want to take my hurt and loss and curl up in a very small ball in the back of the dark closet. I want to give up having to fight against my sin, fight my pain and strive for joy, fight for my and my children's rights in life, fight for authentic relationships that benefit both parties. I don't want to fight anymore. But I know that through it all, although the world may forsake me...my Lord
never will. I will
always be accepted by Him. I will
always find favor in His eyes because of His redemption, not because I could ever be good enough to be worthy of love. And when I feel my strength failing me, that is when He is most present. I pray for healing today for the ever present broken pieces of my heart. And I pray that my healing will give me the skills I need to comfort my children's losses and hurts, even if I am ever the cause of that pain. I can't keep them from feeling family or friendship loss or protect them from what the world will throw their way. But I can be
here. And I will.
We dressed in costume last night to get free kid's meals at Chick Fil A.
I put together goody bags for Vivi's class fall party tomorrow.
Isaac enjoyed making mummy pizzas.
Vivi decided to come to dinner in costume as Cinderella.
Isaac chose to be a rescue ranger.
J came to dinner as Paparazzi.
Spooky Eyeball Tacos!
Graveyard dirt cups for dessert.
Billy is saying "what is in this?"
Green eggs and ham w/ghost toast...ok this just looks gross.
Have you met these sweet girls before?
And for nostalgia sake, here is the last time the girls were all together...
Halloween festivities officially began in our house last night with dinner!
And this morning the kids woke up to a visit from The Great Pumpkin
Isaac's bucket, he loved the set of pens as he has really been into journaling lately.
J's bucket, he of course loved the candy in his!
Beginning this Sunday, I will be cooking up some Halloween themed breakfasts, dinners, and desserts....like this adorable Scary Skillet Shepherd's Pie!
Mummy Pizzas (on english muffins)
Ghost Toast!
Spooky Taco Eyeballs
My fall decor makes me smile every time I go in the kitchen, LOVE this season.
I finally got the thank you cards done and mailed out from the party.
Billy has been on a business trip all week, so we have kept busy.
I made the kids each a Movie Snack Pack w/ Smartfood popcorn, Toy story fruit snacks, a ring pop, and a fun size candy bar. I have come to discover with little kids at the movies, you have to keep the food coming!
Isaac had Pumpkins and Pj's at school last night.
They started by having teachers read various pumpkin books in the library.
Then they went into the cafeteria to paint pumpkins and enjoy cookies and apple cider.
Here is Isaac's teacher and his best friend, 
But then there are some celebrities who seem to have done this adoption thing the "right way" (whatever that means), having to undergo multiple home studies and wait years to bring their children home...
What is the common thread with these celebrities? They adopted internationally and/or trans racially. Has this "trend" set adoption back as couples scramble to adopt kids who are different from them as some kind of badge of racial equality or spiritual maturity? Sandra Bullock states she did not set out to adopt outside her race. She had a heart for the city of New Orleans, so that was where they wanted their baby to be born. And I would assume by the fact that after bringing her son home and purchasing a home in New Orleans, that she likely has an open adoption with his birth family. We personally did not set out to adopt kids of any specific racial background either, but I am not judging those who do. I just wonder why? Just like I wonder why it is so important to some people that their child be of their same race, although I kind of get the reasons surrounding that more than the reasons surrounding setting out to specifically adopt a non-Caucasian child. And I have noticed, as evident in our own seminar, that domestic infant adoption (especially a baby of one's own race) seems to take a complete back seat in the discussion to "find homes for the worlds 147 million orphans". 
As though if a white couple in America adopts a white infant (which 100's of couples a year do) that this is not really seen as the same as adopting an orphan, a black or biracial baby, or an older child from the foster care system. Like those couples are not in the same "league" as us. This disturbs me. These babies could have been aborted, but they weren't...and their mothers made a decision to place them in a loving forever family. As I said, in our particular seminar, there was NO discussion of domestic infant OPEN adoptions. We had lunch tables designated for people to sit if they wanted to hear about International Adoption, Adopting from the Foster Care System, and Building Multiracial Families. A week before the event, I had pointed out that we needed a table for Open Domestic Adoption. Billy and I sat at that one, and we had a full table of other couples interested in talking about this subject over our Jason's Deli boxed lunches. This surprised me greatly because all the couples had just sat for 3 hours listening about international adoption and orphan care ministry. It showed us, as we had suspected, that open domestic infant adoption needs to be discussed every single time adoption is going to be presented. And that couples who choose that route are no less in need of adoption support, encouragement, and financial assistance-as are those who choose any other route. It was actually said "well who would lead the discussion for that table?" I think some forget because we are a multiracial family with 2 coming home through the foster care system, that we also have a daughter who was adopted domestically as a newborn in an open adoption! At our lunch table, we were able to address a lot of the fears people have in this kind of adoption. 
We scored a super sweet deal on the popcorn machine rental for the party from a lady that does marketing for Chick Fil A. She gave us extra kernels and oil and told us if we didn't use it up at the party, to make it up over the weekend, as we had the machine for 3 days!
We did not hesitate to take her up on that offer by having movie night two nights in a row!
This was the yummiest popcorn ever!
Oscar waited patiently every time we fired it up.
J started screaming as the popcorn streamed out of the kettle.
The kettle cools down almost immediately, so the kids were able to scoop their own. They loved playing "popcorn lady" as they called it.
J insisted on doing ours too. We couldn't tear him away from it!
Doesn't it look smashing in my kitchen?
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