Choices

Everyone has choices in life. Every day we are faced with choices on what we will do that day and although there are consequences to certain choices we still get to make those choices. You can choose to go to college, be happy, make good grades, smoke a cigarette, learn an instrument, go to work, find a new job, etc. as long as you are willing to put in the effort to accomplish those goals/dreams. We definitely have a choice in if we will have a family or not. Andy and I have made the choice from the beginning of our relationship, that we wanted to have a family and that it was important to both of us no matter how those children enter our family.

Although it is taking us longer to realize our dream of being parents, we are still fully invested in one day being parents. Now that we are waiting to adopt (and have been for almost two years) our only choice really is to continue the adoption process and wait, or to stop and not become parents through adoption. Neither of us is close to being at our stopping point for the adoption rollercoaster, so we wait for someone else to make a choice that will include us. We cannot imagine not having a family, and we are willing to put in the time and effort to have one. Also, we know someone out there will choose us and will want us to be parents.

During the waiting you come to realize that you are now waiting for a choice to be made by someone to say I choose them. I choose them to be the parents to my child because I cannot give them what they will need or what I think that they should have as they grow up. It is humbling to think that there is someone out there that will one day say if it can’t be me that raises my child then these people are who I want to raise him/her.

There are lots of adoption sayings out there saying “I am chosen”, in reference to a child that has been placed for adoption, when the child is actually being chosen twice. The birth family chooses to love the child so much that they want a different life that they cannot give them. Then, the adoptive family chooses to make the child a part of their family forever.

In open adoption it is not about one choice but many choices by several people that will one day make us a family. We look forward to having a child and we also look forward to knowing the birth mother and making her part of the family as well. We know that with open adoption the amount of contact might not be a lot (depending on the birth mother and us) but we hope that we can all be part of each other’s lives even if it is just through emails or calls.