I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all your comments and support about this dilemma. I really do. I have been pondering all day the comment about how I really was just looking for a magic bullet—some solution that would feel good rather than the lesser of two evils. How many times I have dealt with parents who are contemplating disruption and I tell them, “Either way you go, you won’t like your decision!” There just aren't any magic bullets, are there?


At this point, odds are the fast food joint that employs Amy will not be understaffed the week we are in Colorado. No edicts have been rendered yet, but we are leaning that way… stay tuned…


This unfolding drama has provided quite the backdrop for what I did all day. On Tuesday, I present to a local adoption coalition. Rather than do an attachment training, they want to hear “My experiences as an adoptive mom and as the founder of ATN… and what do social workers need to know?”


So I have spent nearly the entire day building a PowerPoint presentation. It consists almost exclusively of photos I have taken through the years. (There is one slide that is a partial list of disrupting kids that have been brought to my attention this past 7 months... there were 9 on the list. Here is an article I wrote about disruption... folks find it and contact me...) Just as I have created collages for this blog, I created collages and series of photos that describe my family's roller coaster ride of the past two decades. It has been… what word shall I use… bittersweet? There sure are different degrees of bitter vs. sweet, depending on what kid you’re talking about… This isn’t the first time I have done something like this… and do you know what I see every time I plow through all my photos? I see picture after picture of kids dressed in matching homemade clothes, with homemade Christmas and birthday presents, elaborate Halloween costumes and carved pumpkins, handmade and decorated
birthday cakes, visiting all kinds of fun places, getting hugged all the time by all family members—in other words, getting opportunity after opportunity to embrace the good things in their lives and to attach to the folks in their family. I’m not saying it was perfect—far from it. We were all going down with the degree of anger that permeated that house. And fancy cakes don't a happy family make... But the opportunities were sure there for something different to occur.


Every time I prepare something like this and I see that pictorial validation of just what I tried to do, I’m not quite sure how to feel. Do I feel vindicated that it was, indeed, offered? Should I feel the rejection once again because what we offered wasn’t accepted? Do I dwell on what the kids lost—both the unhealthy ones and the healthy ones? It is impossible to cruise through two decades of photos—two decades of lost hopes and dreams—and not be profoundly affected.


I have said this a thousand times before but I will say it again… I am so very thankful that God sent me Beth. I needed her probably even more than she needed me…