Adoption is a crazy roller coaster ride of emotions and stress, no doubt about that. I know I have said this before, undoubtedly I will again. When I sat in front of this computer in July 2006 and saw the website that set me and my family on this course, I thought "The stress could be bad for you, adoption even when it goes well is stressful" (ours has not gone well so far) As a cancer survivor I know well that stress raises cortisol levels which in turn lowers your immunities, and then you tend to get sick often. Since chemotherapy; which sapped me of so much (it has taken years to recover) stress is not so fun for me, even the good kind, I always catch a cold whenever I have been riding the cortisol express for too long, and I have that cold now. Why? Because I have not been sleeping worrying about Eva.
I used to love stressful situations, they made me feel alive. Not the bad stress of death, illness, losing a job, etc, but the excitement of planning a successful event, or learning something challenging. It never seemed to bother me because I do not lose my head in times of stress but tend to deal well at the time and then later fall apart (over-eating, catching a cold). My husband is the opposite of me, which is why we are a good match.
In this adoption it seems as though every time I voice my thoughts or fears, I am told everything will be perfect once she is home. This is unrealistic and dangerous to say to anyone, adoptive or bio parents, and I know this is not true, I have 6 children, and even with a typical birth, there is an adjustment stage for everyone.
Eva will require a lot from my family, and she is a far different child than the one that we began this adoption journey for. Eva's frail condition; a heart defect that needs surgical correction, that she cannot move on her own and will be very much like a tiny infant, and the many therapies awaiting her, all of these were not what we faced when we were adopting Joy, a "highly functioning child" indeed this is why the other family chose her. We had agreed to adopt Eva because we were told Joy and she were best friends and separating the girls could kill Eva.... and we knew her fate was to live out her life in a mental institution; we could not forsake her. Still we do have that fear that she is too ill to travel, we are afraid of that more than anything, we want her home safely with us, we already picture her as part of our family. Add to my fear of losing her too, just like I did Joy, the pain of that loss still with me, though it has dulled as we have moved forward to adopt Eva and little Amanda, she will always feel like she was my daughter too.
Oh those fears that creep in....my husband especially is afraid that Eva may pass away during her heart surgery, and is even more fearful of the long flight home should she need medical attention. Is it wrong to be concerned about any of this, well according to many people, yes, it is. It shows we lack faith, resolve, commitment. I say to all of them, even those who have faith can also have reasonable fears of the future. I KNOW that life does not always go the way we think it should, and we are not in control, blind faith is not something I will ever accomplish, I know this.
Still, mixed in with the fear and apprehension is the growing love and respect for who Eva is, that little wisp of a girl is a survivor, she is a fighter, and she is so beautiful. Ukrainian children are gorgeous anyway, but their children with Down syndrome look like little angels, and Eva most certainly does. And while her motor skills will be that of an infant, you can see by her eyes that she KNOWS and SEES everything, and has so much to say, we want to help her learn to say it.
Yesterday I got a revelation of the limitations of email correspondence. The other person can't see you and know truly who you are, or see the tears streaming down your face as you type when you hear bad news, they are spared the visuals of your grief, and written words so often cannot capture it enough to allow the other person to know that you are at the end of your emotional endurance and need help.
Email only friends can't truly know everything about you, they know what you write in your emails, they base their assumptions on them to decide who you truly are. At least when a person talks on the phone with you they can hear your family in the background. They can hear your tone of voice and know you are sincere, troubled, confused, or in pain.
It is so much easier to ignore true emotion in an email, even with emoticons, it just does not translate into real person communication. It is easier to be abrupt, judgmental, mean, or flippant when you are annoyed or angry because you cannot see the effect your words have on another person, and that makes email dangerous to relationships.
For 10 years I have been a member of support groups on-line, and more times than I can count there has been miscommunication because someone read the email wrong. I remember once, when emoticons were a new thing, I mistakenly used the anger one thinking it meant embarrassed, the person receiving my email was confused why I was so mad, when it was obvious from what I wrote that I was embarrassed about something.
I think that we all make mistakes when communicating, I know I do, I try to allow that we are all human and mistakes help us grow and learn. While we struggle, God is there to lead us through our life's journey, but in times of stress sometimes we shut ourselves off from Him. Not to mention that when things go wrong, we can be angry that God allowed them to happen, and talking to Him is difficult to do.
Yesterday God and I had quite a conversation, no burning bush (smile), but a heart to heart conversation and I grew more calm and my eyes opened enough to see beauty where before I saw illness. I am not usually someone who judges by appearance, I suppose I was not expecting what I saw; but I work with senior citizens who have life all over them, form missing limbs to frail health, people whom I feel are beautiful and wonderful, people many younger folks disdain. Still I was shocked by pictures I had seen and they nearly floored me. Following that was about the worse day a person can have, full of miscommunication and misunderstanding, and sadness. We all need to go through those days, but they are so painful, and we feel like our heart is breaking. Yet they allow us to realize how precious each day is, even those wasted on negative thoughts. We need to remember that yesterday is gone forever, and today is the day we need to live for. We need to learn not to repeat the bad days, but to learn from them and move forward from there.
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