Adoption Day -98
Brenda can’t understand how losing Jessica and Erika has affected me. She won’t be able to understand because to her, they were just strangers living in our house. Since they were my daughters, I am not able to “get over it” like she expects me to. I’m not blaming her so much for them being gone anymore (though if she wanted to keep them, they would still be with us) but it’s more that I’m just very sad, and think about them often.
When you hear about someone’s children being abducted and the parents not knowing where the children are, what may have been done to them, or if they are even alive – that’s an even worse position than for those parents than at least have some sort of finality if they knew that the child was dead. I know that sounds terrible, but it’s true. Not knowing and wondering is much worse than having some sort of finality/resolution to the situation, even death. I’m in the former category – knowing that my daughters are out there somewhere, living with another family, but not knowing where they are, who they are with, not knowing how they are affected by what happened, wondering what they think about us and wondering if I will ever see them again. The only consolation is that I know that nothing terrible is happening to them.
Brenda tells me that they are not my daughters and that God had a different plan for them, different parents for them. Well, I don’t agree with her. I do believe they are my daughters. We went into adoption with the intent of having a successful adoption, of having new children become a part of our family. Adoption was not going to be a temporary thing for us. If we wanted temporary, we would have done foster care. We were doing what God was leading us to do – adopt children. Whatever children we would get would be ours, forever. I also believe that we messed it up. Was God surprised at what happened? No. Did we make bad choices that caused Jessica and Erika to be taken away? Yes. I believe it was our failure that caused this, not God’s choice. God does not choose for us to sin, yet we do. He does not choose for us to be out of His will, yet we have the free will to do that. I believe that’s what we did with Jessica and Erika (some of us more than others). Yes, God did allow it (obviously) but I believe it was due to failure on our part.
It’s a struggle at our house. Brenda, Holly and Mitch have “moved on” and have been back to living their lives as close to usual for some time now. We really don’t talk about Jessica and Erika. They don’t want to see pictures of them – I can’t have pictures of all 4 of the kids as a desktop or screen saver on the computer. They don’t want to be reminded of them and it seems like they want to just pretend it never happened. Though I doubt they’d agree, it’s like they are in denial that we had 2 daughters/sisters living with us. Is that a healthier place to be than where I am at – sad and greiving? I doubt if one is worse than the other, but I can say that they are not compatible in the same house. It causes tension. I want to remember Jessica and Erika in a good way, talk about them, not let them be forgotten. Brenda, Holly and Mitch don’t want to see them or remember them. I’m the one who is expected to “progress” to their viewpoint and move on.
