Adoption December 2009 – Life Sucks

While there is no real way to determine this I believe that the adoption experience is the only experience where the father can experience almost exactly what the mother experiences from a pain perspective. Every adoption experience has its fair share of ups and downs. Every adoption is typically immersed in unmet expectations, lots of waiting, periods of lost hope, periods of false hope, and periods of renewed hope. Some adoption stories end with overwhelmed parents, and overwhelmed kids. Some adoption stories end only to begin again once siblings are found. Some adoption stories never begin, and these are the ones that sadden me the most. While all adoption stories include vast similarities every adoption story is different, and ours is off the charts different.

Yesterday was Tuesday. Tuesday is Adoption News Day at the Smiths. This is the day that our adoption agent, Jill, is in contact with the people on the ground in Uganda which may include the Ugandan lawyer and Prossy-who runs the orphanage and is married to the Visionary Pastor of about 100 churches in East Uganda and West Kenya. His name is Lucas.

We have been expecting to hear something for a few weeks. The hopes of my wife, Kristi, were that a newspaper ad had been placed and no one came forward to contest the adoption of the three children that we have been given the opportunity to adopt. The reality was that Lucas and Prossy had been in Kampala for about two weeks trying to obtain NGO status for the orphanage in Busia, and not only had they still not secured the NGO status, but it would be until February before it was granted, if granted at all.

I was prepared for reality, after having served in Uganda for a month in 2007 and after having two years worth of unmet expectations I knew to add 6-8 weeks to the best possible scenario and then only put a 50% chance on that being met. Kristi, on the other hand, is a positive thinker. She says things like, “It shouldn’t take too long to paint the bedroom.” Of course, for those of us who do the painting we know that when painting on a part time basis the painting will be completed in a matter of weeks not hours. It took me a year to finish the bonus room upstairs to prepare for our new additions. I’m pretty sure that was 11 months longer than Kristi thought it would take…ok maybe 10.

So, yesterday’s news came crashing in on her in a very unsuspecting way. Maybe I should have been clued into the fact that this news was going to have a very different impact than I suspected on Kristi as Jill broke down into tears with me on the phone, but somehow I just missed it. Kristi was crushed. I delivered the news in a very nonchalant almost apathetic manner, which I was confident would just enable her to move on quickly to flippantly respond, “Well, that’s no surprise.” Instead, she quietly disappeared. I went looking for her several minutes later with a child’s question about a school project. I found the master bathroom door locked. With this being typically a sign that I’m in big trouble I knocked hesitantly and listened closely. I closed the bedroom doors, picked the lock and found her losing control of her emotions on the floor of our closet. Unable to talk to me, I resisted the fix-it mode we men tend to dive into when our wives are upset. Instead I apologized for my clear mishandling of the news. I reassured her. I prayed over her, held her, and let her cry.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to try to tell our adoption story. So, tune in on Thursdays as I walk you through the epic that is our adoption story.