Every little decision affects generations of people

I'm re-posting this from the Common Room because it's so important. It's important for families, for military, for adoptive parents, for folks with no money, and to me, most importantly, it points out how important it is to realize your decisions will impact people forever that you might never meet. Read all the way to the bottom.

I will add my two cents. Had abortion been legal in 1944, my mom is pretty sure she would not be here. And if she weren't, then I and my sisters wouldn't be, and my second wouldn't have been adopted by us, and my other birth children would not be here either.

And who knows who my husband would have married. He had interesting taste in girlfriends...

Please take one lesson away from this post (I even copied the comments): YOU matter. Life matters. Your decisions all matter. Now trust God to make them right.
God bless!

Thursday, January 26, 2006
Life is Better Than We Planned

Partial repost that seemed suitable for this week:

We are the recipients of many unplanned blessings, and children are not the least of them.
In this post I want to tell you about two special "unplanned" additions to our family who were adopted. We had three children, had just had a miscarriage, the headmaster was enlisted in the AF, and I was a sahm (this means very little money). We weren't seeking adoption at all, but we heard of two little girls who needed a home together, and we just couldn't come up with a good reason to say no. There was an announcement in our church bulletin asking for prayers for the caseworker who was placing them. I had miscarried only one or two weeks prior. When we came home I asked the headmaster if he'd seen it, and he said yes, and asked if I'd seen it, and I said yes, and we looked at each other. He made the phone call.

One of the children was severely handicapped, and it was unlikely anybody would take on both of them (nearly 4 and 6 at the time) because of the severity of those disabilities. The birth-mother did not want them separated. And so, over the objections of everybody sensible that we knew, we opened our home to this unplanned blessing.

It made no logical, financial, or even emotional sense since I was still
recovering from the grief of a miscarriage at 16 weeks gestation. By the time I had the D&C I needed (often not required, but in my case I had to have it), we had already met the children. In fact, the children arrived the same month our baby would have been born.

It's funny to call an adoption unplanned, but it really was. What little planning we were able to do came to naught. We were supposed to take the children for weekends for a period of a few months so they could get used to us. Instead, before they ever had their first weekend and just two weeks before Christmas the birth mother called we were told to come get them the next day. She had her reasons, and I won't go into them here, but she did have their very best interests at heart.

So... we went to bed with three children and the next morning suddenly gained two more children who came to us with nothing but the clothes on their backs and some immediate and distressing but treatable medical problems, and some longterm and severe medical problems- again, just two weeks before Christmas. We had no clothes for them, no beds, no presents; nothing was in readiness for them, except our hearts (and even those needed some sprucing up).

There were plenty of the super planners in our congregation and others where that same bulletin announcement appeared. They had more financial ability, more space, fewer children, were probably better parents in many ways, had greater nest eggs, more maturity, more wisdom, and certainly better organizational skills than I did. They had the option to adopt these kids, but they didn't because it didn't fit in with their plans. We have two more warm, wonderful, loving, fun, delightful, precious, precious children. They have their nice plans and their nice uninterrupted lives.

I won't say the adjustment period was all sweetness and light and trouble free. It wasn't, of course. We all, the children and their new family, had some adjustments to make and the children had some healing to do. It was hard, and it was busy, and it was often exhausting. But somewhere along the way the hard parts were overwhelmed and outnumbered by the joy, and the children are blended so well and so fully ours that I have actually had to stop and think for a moment about why I can't recall their birth stories. Then I remember that I wasn't there for their births. I can't imagine life without them. We received so much questioning of our decision and we are so blessed by all our children that it's hard sometimes not to feel just a little bit smug about how happy we are, but I do realize that is an unworthy feeling. Happiness and gratitude are more appropriate, and truly, more common.

Incidentally, I was an unplanned baby, too, a honeymoon child. My mother returned from the honeymoon to her doctor who groaned, "Didn't you do anything I said?" She had followed his advice because they had plans. God had different plans. Her pregnancy and delivery were complicated by a condition which usually, under the circumstances in which I was born, result in death or severe brain damage for the baby. I survived, and though some might insist that I am brain damaged, nobody can say it is severe. Had I not been born when I was, I would certainly not have been in the right place and time to receive these other two unplanned, but very much wanted, blessings. And so the gift goes on, generation through generation.

Sometimes the best things in life are NOT planned. Just ask The Happy Housewife.

Posted by Headmistress, zookeeper at 1/26/2006 04:45:00 AM

9 comments:

B. Durbin said...

My mother caught German measles when she was pregnant with my eldest sister. That sister turned out just fine.
1/26/2006 07:38:00 PM
texasfriend said...

Oh, I'd say it was ALL planned. Just not by you. :-)
1/27/2006 11:18:00 AM
Patricia said...

Wow!!! That was beautiful! What a blessing! God is so good! ~ Patricia
1/28/2006 07:41:00 PM
TulipGirl said...

And I wasn't expecting to cry tonight, either. *huuug*
1/29/2006 06:18:00 PM
Concerned Christian said...

I think this is a beautiful testimony to God's blessing in your life. He is teaching you some valuable lessons about contentment and obedience. However, it's important to remember that He teaches his children uniquely, in various ways. If I were a member of your congregation, I would be rightly offended at this comment: "We have two more warm, wonderful, loving, fun, delightful, precious, precious children. They have their nice plans and their nice uninterrupted lives." God's blessing in your life does not have to imply a lack of obedience in someone else's. If it really was God's will for you to adopt those children, then the other church-goers were very much obeying God in allowing you the opportunity to adopt them. Furthermore, it seems presumptious and uncharitable to assume that others hadn't sought God on this matter. God may have good reasons for telling them not to adopt those children. He may be working on their hearts, "interrupting their lives," in a way you aren't even aware of. I feel that you've taken a good story of God's blessing in your life and used it as a way to condemn others, and I don't believe that was His intent. I am happy for you and your family; I just don't believe that this blessing gives you the right to say that other people are not in God's favor. God teaches and blesses us all differently because we all need different things.

Please understand that I say this out of concern and love for all God's children, with all due respect and humility. Your post was a good reminder to me to allow God to bless me in unexpected ways. Let us learn from one another.
1/31/2006 07:53:00 AM
Headmistress, zookeeper said...

Concerned, I appreciate your concern, but I fear you are doing in your comment exactly what you condemn me for. It seems to me that since one of us was actually a member of that congregation and one of us doesn't even know where that congregation is or any of the people in it, I might actually know something about it. Some of those people volunteered the information from their own mouths that they didn't make the phone call because.... 'our car isn't big enough,' or 'it would be inconvenient for my job.' We actually heard criticism and disagreement voiced with our decision to adopt, and most astonishing to us were the number of people who demanded, "Why on earth would you do that?!!"

Which of us, you or me, was told _not_ to do this? I was told that it was impossible for people to love a child not related to them by blood as much as one's own biological child.

So one of us is certainly presuming and assuming something here, but since I know for a fact by their own statements that some specific members of that congregation did not pray about it at all before deciding that not having a car large enough was a sufficient reason not to pursue adoption, I must point out that you are quite mistaken in your assumption that I don't know that some of them didn't seek God's will in the matter.

Please understand that I offer this suggestion with all due respect and humility and out of concern- it's nearly always a mistake to presume to jump to negative conclusions about a person when they are recounting a situation where you were not involved and do not know more of the particulars than you were given here.
1/31/2006 08:56:00 AM
Not-so Concerned Anymore said...

Headmistress, Thank you for your clarifying response. I am relieved to know that I was wrong, and feel better having a little more information. I may have reacted defensively, myself, because what you wrote originally was offensive to me. Sometimes things in writing come across in an offensive manner, and I felt i needed to point out how that came across. Maybe I should have assumed that much from what wasn't said. I apologize if I came off as judgmental. I too am tired of people making rash statements that are untrue or uncharitable. I hate to think that I came off poorly myself. (This is the problem with written communication, I guess. Too much opportunity for misinterpretation.)

Having the added information, I would agree with you that those people were unkind to you. I would probably be as frustrated as you are! I trust that you handled their remarks with dignity and grace.

Thank you for giving me the bigger picture. I know I wasn't involved in this situation and in my mind I was giving you the benefit of the doubt; my written response was for other people's benefit. I see now that I probably should have expressly given you the benefit of the doubt in my response. I was actually more concerned that what was written sounded unkind, and I wouldn't want people reading it to get the impression that Christians are unkind or uncharitable. I fear we already have that reputation with some.

Again, thank you for the clarification in writing. It is comforting to me to know where your true frustration lies; now I feel free to rejoice with your excitement and to grieve with your frustration.
1/31/2006 09:38:00 AM
Headmistress, zookeeper said...

{{hugs}}
1/31/2006 10:12:00 AM
Jenee said...

I just read this after following a friend's link. We are involved in a somewhat unplanned adoption ourselves and very, very excited about it it depite the ugly comments of those who think we already have "enough" children. Thank you for your touching story! ocarrolls.blogspot.com
8/07/2007 09:35:00 PM