Winning the Lottery

I woke up this morning kind of excited about writing on my blog again today.  Now, don't let this spoil you as I am not promising I will write everyday.  But then again, I am not sure anybody is reading this anyway, so I guess I don't need to worry yet about disappointing anybody!!!  Regardless, I woke up thinking about what I should write about.  It only took a minute for me to realize that I only started the story yesterday and I need to tell some more of the story today.  If yesterday's blog scared you, hopefully today's blog will give you hope for the future.

A friend contacted me last night and asked for my insight on a child she is currently being considered for as a prospective adoptive parent.  I read through his short online bio and had to smile to myself.  This precious little boy is a child that I had run across before on the  www.adoptex.org web-site.  I too had pondered inquiring about this child.  I will keep him in my prayers and hope that this means that there have been enough inquiries that a good match can be made for this child.  I fear that all too often children end up being placed in a home partly because nobody else wanted them.  That really doesn't provide the "best" home for the child.  Better than remaining in foster care for sure, but still not the best.   If my friend is matched with him, she will feel like she just won the lottery.

Shouldn't we be doing better for these kids?  Ok, seriously, we are a large affluent community.  We spend more on Starbucks each year then it would cost to adopt a foster kid. We have the means and the services available with a flick of an app on our iPhones to provide for a child.  I have FIVE adopted kids and my husband and I describe the experience as similar to winning the lottery!  Perhaps not a financial lottery, but certainly an emotional one.  Each one of my kiddos has such a unique personality and has many qualities to be cherished.  That does not mean they are "easy to parent" and "have no problems."  In fact, we are actually a therapeutic adoptive home so some of my kids actually come to us with significantly identifiable emotional disabilities.  On a school IEP that is known as an SIED.  This term encompasses the majority of "alphabet soup diagnosis."  PTSD, FAS, ADHD, Bi-Polar, AS, ED, MR,  and so many more.  Now granted, I do not have experience with ALL the alphabet soup diagnosis, but I am certainly experienced in some.  And yet, my husband and I still feel that we are very lucky to have these children in our home because:

1. They make us laugh
2. They make us cry
3. They make us think
4. They make us pull our hair out
5. They make us proud
6. They surprise us
7. They worry us
8. They keep us young
9. They argue with us
10. They remind us that we are old (don't want #8 to go to our heads I suspect.)
11. They remind us that God has a plan and that really our only job is to love our children and teach them to love others...and then let them go.

I can keep going...  but I think you get the picture.  They do the same things that my 2 biological children do to us.  So being gifted the opportunity to love a child, to guide a child, to learn from a child, and to hold their hand in adulthood is a gift to be cherished.  So where are the families?  The children are waiting...but the families are not lining up.  At least not in the way I would expect considering that they have a really good chance at winning the lottery.