and i blame instagram, facebook, and twitter. i blame all those apps on what has turned into quarterly blogging on this bloggity blog.
happy birthday to clayton! thank god he turned 32 today, because i turned 35 on the 14th and being 4 years apart in age for about a week makes me seem like quite a cougar. 3 years apart is completely respectable. which is good, since clayton is now dr. clayton faulkner. we head to florida in june so he can graduate with his doctorate in worship studies (and spend a week celebrating at disney world).
it finally happened this week. i was driving the boys to tball practice and they were watching despicable me (which is a movie i love) and deacon said, “when you’re adopted you have to go live somewhere else.” i said, “just like y’all used to live in ethiopia and now you live here.” and then he asked, “where is my real mom and dad?” ugh. daggers to my heart.
i will confess that we have not done such a bang up job of explaining the boys’ life stories to them as i wish we had. i had envisioned long, thoughtful talks about first families and special care givers and finding places ending with big family hugs around the fire (i guess i envision these talks on the one cold day in houston)… instead, it happened in the car, while i’m shoving down chicken nuggets and speeding to tball practice… i think i managed to say something like, “i’m your real mom, but your first mom and dad are in ethiopia and they loved you so much that they wanted you to have the best life and so they asked us to love you for them and….” by that part i was rambling and the boys were over the discussion and back to despicable me.
they haven’t asked again. i shared that story this morning at our new learning group at church called ‘family tree’. it’s a group that will look at adoption and orphans in the bible every week and then share our stories and struggles and successes in adoption. we had an amazing group today with so much awesome discussion. the verse was the moses story in exodus 1:15-2:10…we actually didn’t focus on moses as much as his mother (how would she feel putting him in the river, how did she feel when called back into moses’ life as his wet-nurse), the Pharaoh’s daughter (why go take a bath in a river that would have tons of dead babies floating in it, was she looking to rescue babies), and moses’ sister (how quick thinking and brave she must have been to talk to royalty and make a suggestion that would put moses’ mom back in his life)… i can’t wait to meet again next week!
we also shared about our desire to adopt again in the future. right now our agency, gladney, is not accepting ET applications due to the in-country slow downs. i hope that in about 18 months (when i think we will be ready to start again) they open back up. i’m envisioning sisters 0-5. i may or may not have already bought this doll which now lives in my closet. (by the way, dolls in general freak me out, but i love this one!)
ok, so i have to write deacon and masamo’s post placement reports now. masamo’s is late and deacon’s is due in may. i love writing these reports for no other reason than i pray so hard that their first families in ET get to read them.
