Friday, October 19, 2012

Looking Fear in the Eye(s)

Fear is a funny thing. I've known people who have just been driven by fear. Driven.

And though we are all fearful of certain things, I have never been much of a fear-filled person. That is...until I had kids.

Adoption comes with so many fears. As parents, we fear doing it right. We fear scarring our kids. We fear them feeling different their whole lives. We fear their possible hurts that are out of our control.

And me? I fear the birth parents.

When we adopted Dillon, we made it a closed adoption. And it was really up to us. The decision to us was a no-brainer. They could hurt him again. Seeing them might make him re-live some of the trauma he's been through. Secretly, some fears that I had were that he might love them more than me...that he would want to be with them. So keeping them at a distance was what we had to do.

Then came little sister. And the realities of "sharing" her for visits every week...the opening up of communication, be it through a case worker or not.

Then came a little book:

And a class I felt led to "facilitate" full of adoptive parents wanting the very best for their children.

Then came a few dreams (3 to be exact). Montages of happiness that included my children, older, smiling, content. And it featured my Mister & I, smiling, content. And it featured birth parents...smiling, content.

Then came prayer. A lot of prayer. And just...talking it out with God. And Mister.

Then came a letter that it was time for a case review for Little Miss. SO! I felt it was a perfect, non-obligatory way to meet them without kids present. It would be short & sweet. It would be with others present. It would be non-confrontational. It would be fine.

It would not, however, be easy. We doubted going and starting this process even as we were walking into the room.

But we did it. We faced our fear(s). Right in the eyeballs. And we smiled. And talked about our children. Our children.

And God was good enough to let me see beauty. Even though some ugly things have been done to hurt and scar my child for life, God allowed me to see beauty there. No anger & hurt. No bitterness.

I saw beauty. Those eyes gave me my two biggest blessings. And I literally couldn't ask for more.


For realz.

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