The Girls' Perspective

We often get comments along the lines of, "Your girls will be so excited to be a part of your family!" or "The girls are just going to love you guys so much!" or "They are going to be SO grateful!"

And we hope these things are true. Eventually.

The fact is that it may or may not be that way in the beginning. It probably won't be. Bonding with older children who have no concept of a family, whose new parents are total strangers who speak a foreign language and are taking them away from everything and everyone they know is likely going to be extremely challenging for us all and SCARY for them. In many cases, kids/teens in orphanages have been lied to about America/Americans. They're told horrible and awful things, and many children are scared of what will happen to them in America. So tragic and heartbreaking.

To have guidelines and rules and chores within a family will be new. To be able to be a kid and totally trust an adult will also be new. Imagine that simply being a kid and trusting your parents is a foreign concept. Hard to imagine, right? To feel real love, touch and be told "I love you." All new. It may take a while to break down the walls that the girls will probably have up. It may take them a long time to trust us and even longer to love us.

In a blog post titled Angela's Advice by Cindy LaJoy, Cindy recounts a deep conversation she had with her 15 year old daughter Angela who was adopted at age 12 from Kazakhstan. The words here are honest and real. They made me smile, laugh and cry. They touch my heart in a deep and incredible way because these experiences are very likely how, or similar to the way, our girls will feel.

Some of the lines from this post that struck me most are:

"It's not a fairy tale, mom.  It's hard and uncomfortable, and everyone thinks it is going to be comfortable fast, but it won't be."

"We were told so many bad things about coming to America, so many wrong things. We were told that when we got off the airplane they would take us to a hospital and cut our hearts out."

"Oh, you need to tell them that they shouldn't give their kids too much stuff because we don't know what to do with it and we don't even know what we really like or want."

"Your kids don't know how to be kids, and they don't know how to be adults, and they don't really know how to be anything!"

"You told us how to hug, remember?"

I strongly urge you to read the post in its entirety. It will be very insightful for you to have a glimpse of what our sweet girls, and other older adopted children, will be going through.

Please be praying. Pray that God would go before us and wrap His arms around them. Pray that He would prepare them to be a part of a family. To be loved and adored. To trust. To love us back. Pray that He would calm their fears and give them His indescribable peace. Pray that our family of six will be able to bond, trust and love as easily and quickly as possible. Please pray for their hearts. The girls. AND the boys. And Luke and I, too.

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