The Reality...Of A Bigger Extended Family

 The Reality... is a series of posts that give expression to what life is like

going from being a family of four with two small children,
to instantly becoming a family of seven
when we adopted our three oldest children.

I've thought about this day for the past year and a half. 

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Tonight Sam and I are meeting with the biological grandmother of our three oldest kids for the first time since the kids have been in our family. Our adoption is closed and November of 2011 is the last time that our three kids saw their biological family (they were 3, 6 & 7 at the time.) This is the first big step to walking out what we hope is reconnecting a relationship of some kind between our kids and their biological family.

We have met their grandmother a couple of times before when the kids were in foster care. We also had interaction with their biological mother various times over that same time period when we were helping care for the kids at Joel & Beth's house. At the time we had no idea that we would be at this point years later caring for the kids in the deepest sense of the word.

Caring for them like our very own daughter and sons...caring for them because they are now our daughter and sons...caring for them so much that we can't remember what it was like to not have them as our daughter and sons. It is true what they say that love grows in your heart even if not all of your kids grow in your tummy.

Given the young ages of our kids we wanted them to have some time to become familiar with being part of our family before we began thinking about meeting with their biological family. Sam and I might be able to relate to what moving is like as kids. However, even when I try my hardest to imagine, I can never wrap my mind around what the kids might be feeling going from one family to another, moving, gaining siblings and new family members, and calling someone else mom and dad. 

With the kids we have answered any questions that came up with truth and honesty. We've tried our best to filter everything through: What is appropriate to communicate at their age? What are they able to understand? Anything that we think they are able to understand we tell them to the best of our ability.  

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At first we were navigating through  introducing our oldest three to all of their new extended family from our sides of the family. Now they had more grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. After a few months our biological daughter (who was 3) stopped saying, "no, that is MY grandma" and everyone understood that she is "our" grandma, he is "our" cousin..."all five of ours." 

One interesting thing in all of this is now explaining to our biological kids why our older three kids are talking about "their" grandma and she's not "all five ours." We have tried to explain what adoption means to our youngest kids but they are still trying to understand how the different pieces of extended family work together. 

We actually live in the same city as our oldest three's biological family. The reality was, and will always be, that our three oldest kids have an enormous amount of people that love them VERY much. The bottom line is that we want them to know that.  We have no idea what that will look like, but we so desire for them to know and continue to know the ones that loved them even before we did.

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This is going to be a life long process of walking out questions and explaining things to our kids to the best of our ability. Even if we can't fully communicate to our biological kids why our oldest three have more family than they do. We are really thankful that our oldest three do have so many people that love them.

I'm not going to pretend that I can see how this will all play out. If I started thinking about all of the what if's then I would probably never move forward with anything in my life. I've been able to talk through some of my fears as as adoptive mom with a few people and ultimately have come to the conclusion that love conquers all fears. As I sat down this morning to read my Bible one of the verses said, "I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all of my fears." I am not a Bible scholar but I was able to understand that verse word for word for where I am at right now...today.

I don't want the fact that this is all unknown to me and a bit scary to stop me from something beautiful that could happen. This is when my relationship with God is literally my all...I lean on Him for all. Giving all of my fears, lack of knowledge & inability to answer some hard questions, all into His hands.

Three of our kids have a very special relationship that is longing to reconnect with them and tonight is the first step to seeing that unfold.