Peace Out 2014

New Years Eve, or as Michael likes to call it, amateur night. We are quietly tucked away, mainly because we have a 3 year old who is in bed, and no matter what time we go to bed, she will be up and moving at her normal hour. So, I guess a quiet New Years is in order. However, in my eyes it is a momentous night, in my opinion, especially for our girl.

My Dearest Hosanna,

We are about to turn into a New Year. It will be a while before you fully understand what this means, but your mama, has been thinking about just how important your first one is as a Bowden. So much of your life has changed this year. And as you grow up, we will chat about all those changes, But for now, you start the next year as the first full year in your life that…….

You will never wonder again where your next meal will come from.

You will never question if you are loved and adored.

You will never wonder where you will sleep again.

You will never wonder if you will be abandoned again.

You will have things of your own, and not fight others for them.

You will have a warm bed to sleep in.

You will never wake up feeling alone.

You will never look for someone to hold you when you are sick, or comfort you when you cry.

You will have use of your arm, and continue to learn to use it and adapt.

You can say that Jesus is in the heart, and begin to understand even more what that means.

My girl, you are a treasure not just in my eyes, but your Baba’s and most importantly Jesus’s eyes. I am so thankful that 2014 was the year that I became your mama. I am so thankful that 2014 was another lesson in what love is. Looking forward to 2015, your first full calendar year as a Bowden. The sky is the limit!!!

Love, Mom

When 2014 began, I was excited with great anticipation because I knew in part what was coming. But never in my wildest dreams did I think it would take some of the twists, turns, ups and downs that it has. I learned once again, a lesson in love, grew in the knowledge of whom my Creator is, stood firm for the things that I believe in (no matter the cost), experienced an incredible range of emotions, and can say I value every moment. Many more lessons to learn in the coming year, some life changes to come. 

We get one life to live, may my reckless abandonment grow as I awake to a new year.

The Eve we have been waiting for

We hung this on our tree last Christmas as we waited. . 

I am sitting here in the late hrs of Christmas eve marveling at the fact that our tree looks so different this year. Last year, I remember sitting with Michael at Christmas and just crying because our Santa paper went unused for yet another year, and our girl whom we had a face for, was sitting in her crib in the orphanage, and we had an ornament to hang on the tree. It just all did not seem right.

I had dreams about the first Christmas with her. Dreams of the cookie making, gingerbread house decorating, putting up the Christmas tree, decorating the house (Inside and out), making memories. And as I sit this Christmas eve and marvel about the fact that she is here, I am so excited for tomorrow morning, and the day that we will have together. I have also been battling just what the perfect 1^st Christmas should look like. There are things that I wanted to so badly get accomplished, that did not happen. Yes we put up a tree, (But in the process Michael had a kidney stone attack, and well the star just went on tonight). We did decorate the house, but it was kept at a minimum because it just would have been to overwhelming for our girl. We have had to battle family telling us that Christmas should be on Christmas instead of the spacing out that we have been doing because of just how overwhelming it will all be. There were no gingerbread houses because we just ran out of time, barley baked a few break and bake cookies because who can sit there at three and decorate??

And as I sit, I comes to terms with it is all ok, because while making memories is important, focusing on the fluff is not. It is not because there was no fluff for Jesus. There were no cookies, gingerbread house or tree. The gifts he got on his birthday were small yet very very thoughtful. There was no pomp and circumstance. There he was born in a barn and lay in a manger with hay. We lay our heads on a soft pillow at night, and the one who will ushers me into eternity lay in a barn.  The one who died for my sins, long long before I was born, had cattle around his bedside. The one who has written the story of our girl becoming a Bowden, was ridiculed, scoffed at had a meager and humble beginning. And that is what we want our girl to know and come to love, with lots of fun mixed in.

We do have some traditions that we are beginning with her. Chinese food on Christmas eve, only Santa coming on Christmas day, a Happy Birthday to Jesus cinnamon roll (Because cinnamon rolls are what we use on birthday mornings). There will only be 4 gifts under the tree, want, need, read, and wear. We will read over and over again the birth of Christ leading up to Christmas. We will give in someway shape or form. This year it was picking out some toys for toys for tots. But most of all, and one that she can already articulate, that Jesus is in the heart, and HE will be all she needs.

Merry Merry Christmas to you. May your day be filled with love, joy, peace, and most of all, thankfulness for the lowly beginning of our Savior.

Now I must get to bed, Although I am to excited to sleep!!!!

Santa left some foot prints near his cookies. 

Ahh the paper under the tree

Goofy is ready to play!!!

Love,

Jennifer

Beauty and Ashes

Last month was National Adoption Month. I have been read countless articles and post on adoption. Some really resonate with me, grab the moments where I have had some of the very same feelings but wondered if it was appropriate to mention them. Others I think to my self, “did you think a little bit before you wrote”.

I find myself lately, under some sort of attack if you would call it that. I have been finding that comments about adoption are coming at me like wildfire as we have been out in public and also in private.

After being home 8 months, and trying to process through the adoption as honestly as possible. Not just for myself, but also my girl, I have seen and experienced first hand that there are most certainly two sides to adoption. Not talking, parents and child, but beauty and ashes.

Adoption is beautiful. It is often compared as concrete example of our adoption with Jesus. It is taking a child out of a situation and in most cases, putting them in a situation that is far better.  Just as Jesus hung on the cross for us, to redeem us. In our case, it made us a family. It is taking a little heart, from a situation that is not ideal, and hopefully bringing them into a situation that is better.  This is what is most portrayed in our churches. What is not, Is the reason why God needed to adopt us in the first place. The sin, that brought the need for Jesus. God did not originally create this earth to be fallen. He did not design for families to be broken. Family units get broken through adoption. No matter the reason, somewhere in the line, the family unit gets broken. It is heart breaking to think that parents given a child may not be able to take care of that child. Or a family unit is regulated on how many kids God decides to give it.

Adoption made Hosanna a daughter, cousin, granddaughter, great granddaughter, great niece, niece. She also brought some of the same people, some of these titles they did not have before.

 She is learning and growing leaps and bounds. She continues to amaze us in ways that we could have never imagined and we marvel at just how much joy she brings into our lives.

Watching her try to figure things out, explore, live without fear of much is fascinating.

For the most part, you all get to hear the lovely side to this thing called adoption. You see the fun pictures that we post, and hear the crazy stories of all the firsts that we are experiencing. And yet, there is a side that burns and brings the ash. Or as some would call the UGLY.

The ashy side of adoption is not talked about very much. Or, at least in my experience, when thoughts are expressed, I get a very quick “welcome to parenthood”, or “Oh, that is normal”. Without even so much as a thought to what might actually be going on behind our four walls. So much so, I have begun to really scale back on who I speak with.  What I have come to realize, is that unless you have actually experienced this yourself, and furthermore, this is your first baby (no bio babies before) those come across as very dismissive. People think we have it easy, we sleep through the night, more nights than not. Our girl can feed herself, we are attempting to potty train (Which means no more diapers), she had graduated to a toddler bed, she is becoming more self sufficient as I write.

I even hesitate to write, mainly because I have felt under such attack lately from the world around us. And with each comment that is given, a little notch gets carved in my belt of patience. My reaction however, is one that I have to be very very careful of. In some cases, I am screaming inside, in others I really want to slap someone upside the head. But there is a 3 year old watching me, and how I react to her adoption will shape and mold just how she reacts as she gets older.

But indeed it gets very UGLY.

The ugly comes in from the world:

“Is that really your kid”

“How much did you buy her for”

“You must be rich”

“Why would you not get one from your own country”

“Thank God you got her from over there. They grow them smarter than other places”

“Why would you bring a kid home with a disability”

“What is wrong with you that you cannot have your own kid”

“You are so lucky you missed infanthood”

“What you did is a great thing”

“You really need to experience infanthood”

And then the UGLY that appears at home:

·      The crying in the middle of the night for her mama, but not the mama that is holding her. The other mama that she knows of, and has known for the first 28 months of her life.

·      Praying that maybe this would be the day she would want to rock with you in the rocking chair. Or possibly this would be the day that the “it is ok to snuggle” light goes on in her head

·      Having her reject, turn her nose up or whatever you want to call it, if you do not provide the reassurance of return, comeback or however it is worded.

·      Working through the rejection, abandonment, fear of being left over and over again with each new experience until trust can be built in one subject matter only to move on to the next and start all over.

·      Sitting across the dinner table, knowing that for the first 28 months of her life the coping mechanisms that she created to survive, are being picked apart one by one as we walk through life, hoping to create new, healthy ones. Her life is continually being turned upside down.

·      Watching as the love factor is turned up at dinnertime. Mainly out of a fear that she will not be fed. Or out of fear of not being feed, she is under foot to the point of exhaustion.

·      Listening and watching her struggle to sleep at night from being restless. Not knowing where the restlessness is coming from, and also knowing she cannot communicate it. But she screams out, intensely.

·      Constantly having to justify our boundaries/actions for our child.

·      Sitting across at the dinner table on occasion wondering why I was chosen to raise someone else’s child. Why I will never have the label of first born in my house.

·      Anticipating the questions that we have in the future and the wisdom to explain our girl her story. As we tell her what we know and watching her cope with what we do not.

·       

Don’t get me wrong, I love my girl. I would not change this for the world, in fact the potential of adopting again is becoming more of a thought in my mind. I am ever so thankful each and everyday, I was chosen to be her mama. But I am all to aware that this is an incredibly long road. Her adoption will be a subject matter we will address over and over. Not just because we are a transracial family but because we will take with our daughter about her story.

Please I beg you, the next time you are with a family that adopted, please watch your tongue, while you may not think that your words are harmful, and sometimes are just flippant, remember they could be in an ashes moment. And those are rather intense.

Jennifer

Someone got to play in her first leaf pile ever!!!

One year ago.... YES

One year ago tomorrow, Michael’s leg was broken, I had just had surgery about 10 days before, and we were sitting in the orthopedics office waiting to see if Michael could start PT. It had been a long start to the fall. I remember staring into the PT room, praying that he could go in there, and the phone rang from our adoption agency. I hung up, and looked at Michael “Here we go, another 72 hour window”. This was not our first go at it. We had been sent files before of sweet little faces, with 72 hrs to decided if they would make us a family of three. We had been clearly told, that those sweet faces were a no (for more reasons than I have space to mention. The First No, here you can see just how heavy our hearts were.)

We opened the email together, and my heart fluttered. And right away we knew, this sweet little face was our girl. We had 72 hours to write a letter back to the government to say yes. The day we said yes.

She was beaming with joy, In fact her name meant Happy Autumn and we indeed used Joy as her middle name. She was a ray of sunshine, just when the wait was intense and hard. We had battled for almost 25 months to be a family of three.

And one year later, she has been home a little over 7 months and lives up to every bit of her name. She truly is a ray of sunshine in our lives and we are ever so thankful for her. She has changed a lot!!! To say the least. Growing in English everyday, learning new activities, loves going to church, love her family, animals, playing, singing and dancing. She has hit some great milestones that we have had the pleasure of witnessing in these short months that we have been together.

For those who read and are still in the waiting process, we get it. I can’t even begin to tell you how much we get it. There is such a sweet reward at the end of the wait, that will make it seem like it was nothing in the end. We sit here tonight and marvel at what our Heavenly Father entrusted us with and  the lengths HE went to make it happen.

Enjoy the pics,

 Jennifer