Something new to accept

Many people who adopt children bring them home as soon as possible.  They try to provide stability and routine to help the child transition.  Many experts recommend that adoptive families guard time together and to be a family, asking extended family members and friends to wait a bit before being super involved in order to help the child bond with his/her new parents and siblings.  

We often find ourselves doing things differently than what’s expected, what’s normal or what’s recommended.  Sometimes because we chose it that way and sometimes because we didn’t, it’s just the way it happened...not the normal way.

We’ve had Emma for two and half months now, and tomorrow is the first time the three of us will be in our home.  A few days ago I said, “we’re going to spend a few days at Grandma and Grandpa’s house and then we’re going to our own house.”  She kept repeating the phrase “zi ji jia (my house).”  This is a totally new idea for her.  God has provided for us this summer.  We have lived in friends homes, sometimes with them and sometimes when they were gone.  We have been tangibly loved as friends and family graciously opened their homes to us.  But we are so thankful that tomorrow we will have our own apartment and a place to put our own things.  It’s been three months since Mark and I have had our own house and in her three years and four months of life, Emma has never known “my house.” 

We’re hoping and praying that this crazy transitional summer has helped her to know that places and people change, but Mommy and Daddy don’t.  We hoping and praying that this has been helpful for her bonding with us.  And we are thanking God that she is such a laid back, go-with-the-flow kind of kid. 

I’m also hoping that I can learn a bit from her about how to transition.  Circumstances change, people do come and go, but if I fix my eyes on my heavenly Father, I am safe and loved and I too can go with the flow.  I can trust that it doesn’t matter where I am as long as I’m with Him.