This is my last post for "Raising a Rainbow." A new calendar year has prompted me to re-evaluate what I am saying "yes" to in life and how those choices affect my family. Between raising two girls who came to us via domestic adoption, being a wife, teaching college writing classes, and freelance writing, I have plenty on my plate.

I decided to blog for AdoptiveFamiliesCircle in order to explore my feelings about adopting from foster care and to share our adoption journey. My family rainbow is small right now -- just the four of us -- but I continue to believe that more children will join our family. I'm not sure when, how, or under what circumstances. I look forward to that day. But in the meantime, I'm going to stop and smell the proverbial roses.

Right now, my husband and I have found ourselves in a place of peace. Our days are full, as two little girls, ages three and one, keep us on our toes. And I am learning to live in the moment and enjoy the family I have now instead of always thinking "what if" and "when."

I appreciate your readership. You may visit my blog to learn more about my family and our adoption journey. I wish you the very best in your own adoption journey whomever you are, wherever you are.

When my friend Jessica* gave birth, my daughter through domestic adoption was two months old. I remember rocking my baby one evening and letting the grief and loss her birth mother experienced sink into my heart. It’s easy to boast of the “selfless” decision a birth mother makes, but the decision to place a child for adoption is so much more than a single word. It’s complex and bittersweet. And it’s forever.

The next day, I took Jessica an infant car seat and told her, “I will support you no matter what you decide. Here’s a car seat if you decide to bring the baby home.” I hugged her and left the hospital, my heart pounding. I went home and prayed that God would grant my friend clarity, courage, and peace for the days to come -- whatever they would hold.

A few days later, Jessica sent me a text message to inform me that she had signed the papers to relinquish her parental rights. The chosen adoptive family was on their way to the agency. Would I accompany Jessica and her mom to the agency to participate in a Placement Ceremony? I didn’t hesitate to say yes.

When we arrived at the agency, Jessica went into a private room to spend time with her baby. A few minutes later, she emerged and handed the newborn to the adoptive mother. Jessica, her mother, and I sat on one side of the room, the adoptive family on the other, and the social worker and agency director connected the two half-circles. We made small talk and then the director facilitated a short ceremony. The whole time, all I wanted to do was snatch the baby from the adoptive mother’s arms and hand her back to Jessica.

In that moment, I realized what it was like to be on the other side, to be the one handing over my flesh and blood to near-strangers. Jessica sat beside me, not shedding a tear. She was calm. She posed for pictures with the adoptive family. She held her baby again, kissed her, handed her back to the adoptive family, and then walked out the door. On the way home, we stopped for tacos. The whole evening was surreal.

Life hasn’t been easy for Jessica since the placement. In the days following, she experienced post-delivery bleeding, leaking breasts, and hormone shifts. She wasn’t surrounded by “It’s a Girl” balloons and pink blankets. There is no greeting card for her unique situation. These were little reminders of the enormity of her decision.

Jessica’s pain comes in waves. Mother’s Day is tough, because she’s a mother without a toddler on her hip. Every early February, the baby’s birthday looms like a storm cloud---an anniversary that is both celebrated and mourned. Some days her life is the old cliché: one step forward and two steps back. But how could it not be, I think. She did something incredibly unnatural: she gave her child to someone else.

As for me, I’m now the adoptive mother of two little girls. Because of all I experienced with Jessica, I am adamant that my husband and I honor the girls’ biological parents with our words and acts. We communicate with them often, recognize them on holidays, and display their photographs in our home. But I know, deep down, nothing I do or say will eliminate the pain they experience.

Because Jessica allowed me to be part of her adoption journey, I am able to parent confidently knowing that I am a good mom, but that both my girls have other mothers. Their loss was and still is my gain. My previous belief that ignorance is bliss has been replaced by heart-wrenching truth: adoption is messy. It’s not all about me, the adoptive parent. Nor could adoption loss be “fixed” by my futile attempts to minimize the birth parent’s loss.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face…You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” If I could pass one lesson on to all adoptive parents, it would be this: Open your heart to the reality of adoption. By doing so, you honor your child’s birth family and you become the strong, courageous, and confident parent that your child needs and deserves.

*Name changed to protect privacy

In our state, there is a required 12-month waiting period between placements, and for us that means that we cannot accept another child until December. We do not intend at this point to pursue another adoption this year. Two babies (well, a toddler and an infant) keep us busy. However, the idea of signing an agreement to close our adoption file at this time is greatly bothering me. As I’ve shared with readers, my heart is heavy for the children waiting in foster care, and to think that I'm letting those kids wait while I continue to live my life happily, well, it’s almost unbearable.

A recent conversation with a friend of mine, one who has two biological children and is now an active foster parent, yielded some comfort. She said that perhaps this just isn't our season to adopt from foster care. Maybe, as she put it, we’re just "premature." Despite being rather self-assured in most situations, a self-proclaimed type-A lady, determined and decisive, I'm greatly struggling with the seemingly finality of signing an agreement with our agency regarding our adoption file.  

I must remind myself that the downtime between adoptions can be a remarkable blessing—a time for self-education and maturing. We can use this time to meet with foster families, to read books, and to enjoy this all-too-quick babyhood season with our two lovely daughters. 

At the most random of times, when I find myself caught up in personal adoption dilemmas and convictions, this often-quoted prayer from the Bible, “Give us this day our daily bread,” pops into my mind.   

I asked my husband the other day, “What do you think life will look like for us 10 years from now?” His response was, “Our oldest will be 13 years old!” While my mind was postulating what more children might mean for our family, my husband, wisely, was thinking about the children we already have and the fact that they will grow up so quickly!     

Sometimes I get so caught up in possibilities, daydreams, and fears that I forget to live in the moment instead of in the future. 

So I remind myself to take a deep breath and live one day and one decision at a time. I’m determined to focus on my daily bread. And yes, there very well may be, I hope, more children who will join our family, but I know, deep down, it’s not yet our time to say “yes.”  

This wasn’t the life I pictured when I got married.  

Our first few years of marriage were busy yet blissful. I was in grad school, studying to teach writing, while my husband began working his way up the corporate ladder. We traveled often, ate take-out pizza for dinner, and slept in every Saturday morning.  

Two years into our marriage, I contracted a severe stomach virus while visiting relatives over Thanksgiving break. From that point forward, I experienced drastic weight loss, extreme hunger and thirst, an urgency to use the restroom often, mood swings, and reoccurring sinus infections. A year after getting the virus, my symptoms were worsening to include blurry vision, tingling feet, bedwetting, and obsessive urges to drink and eat as much as possible. I went to five different medical professionals seeking answers, but I was told that I simply needed to eat more in order to gain weight, and I was unofficially diagnosed with anorexia.

In March of 2006, my husband took me to the emergency room. I was struggling to breathe—a horrible feeling. It was only about an hour later that a doctor burst into my room and said, “You have diabetes. We are admitting you for treatment.” I was carted off to the ICU, put on an insulin drip, and handed a stack of glossy brochures featuring supposedly happy diabetics. I was stunned and then heartbroken. My world had been shattered. 

Type 1 diabetes is a disease that has no cure and can be deadly if not carefully and constantly managed. In fact, several nurses informed me that when I came into the hospital my blood sugar levels were so high that I should have been in a coma or dead. As I lay in my hospital bed, I felt like all I had were pieces of who I could have been. As a classic type-A personality, I had a plan for my life. Diabetes did not fit into that plan. 

During my five-day hospital stay, I met with a diabetes nurse educator who trained me on injecting insulin, checking my blood sugar, and counting carbohydrates. During one of my conversations with her, she asked my husband and me if we wanted to have children.  We both, without hesitation, said yes. She responded, “You still can.”

And in that moment, lying in a hospital bed, realizing how fragile my life was and how I had been given a second chance, one word popped into my mind without reservation: adoption.

The life I pictured when I got married didn’t involve an incurable disease. Adoption wasn’t on the table for us because we assumed we would have biological children. I never imagined my children would be of another race (we are Caucasian and both of our children are African-American). I never thought I’d be sharing my children with another set of parents and siblings (both of our adoptions are fully open).   

Our oldest daughter, Rose, was born in late 2008. A year and a half later, we started our second homestudy process for our next child, figuring we’d probably wait over a year, just like we had for Rose. Much to our surprise, the day our homestudy was complete, we got “the call” (you know, the call) for our second child, Lily, who had already been born. Our calm family of three was suddenly moved into a whole new category of survival: parent-on-child defense, one parent per child.

Our life is crazy and beautiful.   

But somehow, I don’t feel full.

I have a constant, persistent gnawing ache in my heart for the children in foster care who are free for adoption. AdoptUSKids reports that approximately 100,000 children are free for adoption in the United States right now. Many of these children have special needs (including type 1 diabetes!), are in sibling groups, or are minorities.

We have so much to give a child. With my health recovered and under control and our two precious daughters in our home, I know we have been blessed beyond any sort of human reason. And I know I was given a second chance to live instead of just float through life as I had before.

Our adoption journey is one that I consider to be a work in progress because we don’t know at this point what will happen for our family but we are considering what could be.

I hope you enjoy learning more about our family and the possibility of us adopting a child or children from the foster care system.  

*Name has been changed to protect privacy.