Fear of the Unknown

When we were preparing for our first adoption in 2005, our social worker approved us for special needs adoption. I got this sick feeling in my gut and told the social worker to remove that approval from our home study. There was no way China was going to refer me a special needs child. To me, special needs was a terrifying thing. For all of my pregnancies, I prayed that I would have a healthy baby. Why in the world would I willingly seek out an imperfect child?

As we waited for our referral of that perfect child, a few families within our LID group chose to adopted from our agency's special needs list. Being a client, I accessed the website and viewed these children myself. I needed to see what the fuss was about. To my surprise, these "special needs" children did not seem so special needs at all. There were some more serious than others, but the majority were very manageable needs. I was uneducated. Special Needs had meant scary, life-long disabilities. I was afraid of the unknowns. But, as I thought about it, wasn't adoption an unknown? While we were considering adoption, I was terrified of it all. I educated myself enough during the wait that adoption was not scary to me anymore. After much research, I realized that special needs was not as scary as I had made it out to be.

A few months later, we received Eva's referral. Our experience with adoption and the travel to China was such a wonderful experience for our whole family; we knew we would be adopting again. But, I knew in my heart, that I would go the special needs route this time around. I contacted a reputable agency who received special needs lists of children every few months (Our previous agency made us wait a year before a second adoption). I let the agency know what needs we could care for as a family and what needs we knew we could not handle at all. Shortly thereafter, we received an email saying they had matched us with a child, but were waiting on the translations. I had another week to wait to see my daughter. Finally, we received Joy's file, and I saw this cute face.



Then I saw the hand. Although I had told our agency we would adopt a child with hand/limb issues, I was not fully prepared. I had to look at her hand over and over again. I had to get familiar with that Unknown. Our whole family had to get familiar with it. Jordan shared with me that she had a dream that Joy was chasing her around the house with the "hand".

Looking back, our fears seem so ridiculous. But, it was something we had to get used to and prepare for. Joy's hand is rarely even thought about these days. It is now familiar. It is so familiar that I never thought much about it until Joy brought this picture home from co-op the other day. Then I thought, "Oh, how cute!" What I once thought as imperfect, was absolutely perfect.