Some new vocabulary

As I posted here, we are adding some new vocabulary to our language. One of the handouts Bethany put in our training packet was "Positive Adoption Language." I don't think most people even think about how what they say could be taken by an adopted person or adoptive parents - I know I didn't before this journey. A friend of mine asked what some of our new vocabulary is; below is a list from our handout:

Positive Language	Negative Language
Birthparent	Real parent
Biological parent	Natural parent
Birth child	Own child
My child	Adopted child; own child
Born to unmarried parents	Illegitimate
Terminate parental rights	Give up
Make an adoption plan	Give away
To parent	To keep
Biological father	Begettor
Making contact with	Reunion
Parent	Adoptive parent
Adoption triad	Adoption triangle
Permission to sign a release	Disclosure
Search	Track down parents
Child placed for adoption	An unwanted child
Was adopted	Is adopted

Some of these terms may seem like splitting hairs, but think about it from a child's point of view. A child who thinks in very literal and concrete terms. And think about the birthmothers who made an adoption plan for their child during an agonizing and difficult decision about whether to parent?

So maybe think about how you talk about adoption. Do you use any of the negative terms above? Challenge yourself to start using some of those positive terms instead!

A big sigh and little hiccup

We finally finished our paperwork for the homestudy! Everything has been submitted, so now the next step is to begin the interview process! Life tried to get in the way, but we kept working a bit, and working a bit more until we finally got it all done. It's such a huge relief to have it off our plate! We still have more paperwork to complete for our agency, but about half of it is already done, and the part I like LEAST is really already mostly done from the homestudy. And then we have the profile books to finish (more on that later in the post).

The hiccup is the fingerprints.

Oh, yes. I had a sneaky suspicion that this would be our first setback. Since there's no fingerprint equivalent to HIPAA, which gives permission to share information between health care providers, fingerprints done for one agency remain ONLY with that agency. Because I'm a teacher and work with kids all day every day, I think I've been fingerprinted a total of six times over the course of my career. Bill's prints were rejected because his perpetually dry hands were - well, dry - on the day of printing. Slather on the moisturizer, man!

And there was no explanation for why my prints were rejected, but I'm quite sure it's my deformed finger. When I was 20, I had WAY too much fun playing in the pool with a bunch of friends and ended up breaking one of my fingers right at the joint. There wasn't much to do for it except splint and ice it, so I did. But to this day it's just a little crooked and won't lie flat unless pressed down. This second round of printing, I reassured the social worker that no, it doesn't hurt to press it down, and are you sure you got ink on that finger? Sure enough, that crazy finger never even got inked. I'm glad she caught that BEFORE pressing it to paper.

In the end, though, it will come out in the wash. We only just turned in our paperwork this week and it will take a couple of months or more to finish the interviews and paperwork processing. And the fingerprints will take a couple of months, so we're really just calling it even.

So, the next step, you ask? Well, Bethany has a lot of stuff for us to fill out, too, but I already took care of a sizable amount the day of our orientation. The last thing we need to do is create a profile book for birthmothers to look at when they are deciding on adoptive families. It's a way to give them an impression of who we are and what we're about. It's probably the most creative part of the adoption paperwork, and I'm actually looking forward to that part. We are searching for pictures, though. If you haven't received an email from me yet and have pictures of us you'd like to share, just leave me a comment below and I'll get in touch with you.

So, I guess we're about 2/3 of the way done with paperwork stuff - yes! We'll keep plugging away until we get it all done! Thank you to everyone who has been praying for us - we truly appreciate it. I know there are a few friends of mine at church who've been warriors in prayer for us, and it is so humbling to know there are so many holding us up to the Lord about this adoption. I know He has everything under control and has planned our adoption down to the very smallest detail. Everything happens for a reason and in its due time. We will continue to walk in faith and obedience as we let the Lord work it all out for us!

The Power in Words

We're nearing the end of our homestudy paperwork - YAY! Next week is spring break for us, so our hope is to get it all done & turned in before Friday.

But the most significant event since our last post was the trip to Seattle for adoptive parent training with Bethany, our agency. It was only a weekend, and we ended up in training all day (we were told it was only a few hours), but it was a very informative and moving day.

There are three things that stuck out to me most: the adoptive parent panel, the birthmother panel, and a short discussion about becoming adoption educators.

I was so glad to hear from adoptive parents and their experiences. I think for the first time in my life, we were sitting in a room full of people who, like us, want more than anything to become parents. To love and hold a tiny little life. To share with them the great blessings God has poured upon us. Although we are at the beginning of this journey, we already have questioned how long it will take us to become three, who the birthmother will be, what issues will we face that we can't even conceive of right now? It can be overwhelming, to be honest. We found strength in their words.

Hearing the birthmothers' stories was an important step for me, too. Although I try to keep a positive attitude and refuse to buy into those horror stories that seem to make it into the headlines and TV movies about adoptions that go horribly wrong, it's hard to completely ignore the very real possibility that we may be matched with a birthmother who decides after all to parent. I have to admit that, while there was no one-on-one contact other than the Q&A, I was a bit nervous to hear their experiences. But I'm glad I did. They were reassuring and heart-warming. These ladies told us of their heartbreak over an ill-made decision and the agony of making the right choice for their baby. Hearing their stories put a face on the word "birthmother". We found comfort in their words.

And then there was the part where the counselors reminded us that since adoption is not the norm in our society, there will always be people who ask inappropriate or downright rude questions, who may have a rather negative or ill-informed attitude about adoption. They advised us that words are powerful, and they can define for us, for acquaintances, and - most importantly - for our child how we think about adoption. We have a new vocabulary to learn, because it will shape our child's view of what it means to be adopted. We found power in words.

Words. With them God spoke the world into existence, gave us his Holy Word, and with them we communicate what is in our hearts. We can use them to build something beautiful, or we can destroy and distort. We can heal and comfort, or we can add poison to the wound. There's a reason Scripture has so much to say about our tongues!

My prayer is that as we continue our journey along this road, God will grant us the grace and wisdom to use our tongues the RIGHT way.