Why we are not adopting

This is a strange title - especially considering yesterday was "Why we are adopting".  Well it's a hook to make you want to read it.  And clearly it worked because here you are & now you are compelled.  And you aren't reading merely because you are bored or are delaying doing the dishes, writing a report or tending a diaper.  Nope surely it was the hook.

This post is more to clarify that some may say they want to adopt because of  "blah blah blah".  This is not to talk down to some of these causes (although I might do that) or that the causes are bad (some misguided, some okay).  Just that they are not driving causes for why we are adopting.

We are not adopting to:

1.  Help some charity case.
We're talking about people, not puppies.  This is especially troublesome in that you can slip into always expecting a child to run down stairs in the morning and say "thank you" everyday for pulling them out of muck and mire, and putting them into your family.  "You are so kind".  When's the last time you thanked your parents for giving you birth?  When's the last time you thanked your boss for keeping you employed?  Your spouse for marrying you?  Not that it would be bad, it just is not going to be a constant attitude.  Eventually you get busy living and the love moves past initial warm feelings.  The relationship grows deeper.

2.  Fix a marriage problem.
We have struggles and disagreement like anybody.  Bringing in chaos isn't going magically solve anything.  Just like getting a dog doesn't make dating couples deeper; it makes them have a common object of focus so they don't have to focus on each other.

3.  score points.
This is not an effort to put more points on our Christian scorecard.  If you're keeping score you'll find you missed the point.

4. fix some personal problem.
Problems aplenty; none will be solved (or expected to be) or even covered up by adopting.

5.  because we can't have kids of our own (or we're short on our magic number)
We have 3 great kids.  Our silly talk early on was five kids.  We went through an involved medical plan for keeping our youngest as a healthy delivery.  Neo-natal allo-immune thrombocytopenia (NAIT).  A child (and life) is worth fighting for and we won the fight;  We are capped, short of a miracle baby (which we will fight through the whole process again) we are done biologically.  We are not looking to fill our quota developed as love-lost teeny boppers.  I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up be a lifetime of growing a family. 


The process has started.  We submitted the application, we have been assigned a case-worker and will soon go through the interviews, background checks, etc.