When we started our adoption, I was all in. Reading other peoples' blogs about their journey to their child. Researching everything I could find on Ethiopia. Going to orphan care conferences. I became totally engrossed in the entire topic of adoption and Ethiopia. I even went a mission trip TO Ethiopia while we were waiting for our referral because I just HAD to get there.
I realize now in all of that time, I somehow became bitter about everything adoption. Why did this person get their referral 'before' other people? Not even before us...they just 'skipped' the line. Why didn't this person donate to our adoption? Why didn't this person sacrificially give to us when we needed it most? I started to think things about certain people that I knew weren't donating to something that was so close to my heart. How could they not care about this as much as I do? Are we even friends?
Those thoughts went through my mind a lot and I'm definitely not proud of that. I lost a lot of friendships during our adoption waiting period. I'm confident that most of those friendships weren't healthy anyway and I'm okay with them being gone. But I also know that I pushed a lot of people away because I didn't think they did enough to support us...at least not what I thought they should be doing.
It's selfish, I know. Selfish to think that I know someone's finances better than they do. Selfish for me to think that every single person I have ever met would want to donate to our adoption. Selfish for me to think that people were as invested in our child as we were. No one else was doing the research I was and it really doesn't matter how many times you tell someone there are 5 million orphans in Ethiopia. They have to see it to believe it and to make it real to them. And now I know that that's okay.
I'm not saying that all of our adoption waiting period was bad. We clearly had TONS of people rally with us, pray for us and support us in every way. And I will forever be thankful and grateful for that. I'm just talking about the other side. The other things I was thinking. They're awful and horrible and I know that. But they are still thoughts that went through my mind at the time. I'm not proud of them.
Now I know I'm in a much better place. When we were adopting, there was this cloud over my whole life...the adoption cloud. And that's not a bad thing if it doesn't take over your life. But for me, when I get obsessed with something, I get obsessed with something. And it becomes unhealthy. And that's what happened when we were fundraising. I was always waiting for this person and that person to donate. And why didn't this other person care enough about us and our child halfway around the world to do something to help us? How could they not see how huge this was??
Like I said, I'm not proud of thinking all of this. But it's the truth. That was my reality. And now I know better. I realize that I will never know everyone's finances. I used to think, 'Why can't each person I know just donate $10??' But really, how could I ever know if that's in their budget? I can't. Because I'm not them. And all of that was so selfish of me to think that every person should donate to us.
Obviously we got funded in a crazy fast amount of time and we had all the money we needed before Kalkidan ever came home. And I am SO grateful for that. I'm so thankful for each person that sacrificed their time and money to help us bring Kalkidan home. Every one of those people will forever be a part of her story and we couldn't have done it without all of them. But ultimately, God is the One that brought her home. He's the One that changed hearts to give financially to our adoption. He knew that we would get fully funded crazy fast and I didn't need to have any of those negative thoughts about anyone.
So right here, right now, I'm letting go of them. I'm not going to feel bad about thinking those things anymore. I'm putting it at the feet of Jesus. Forgiving myself for those thoughts and letting Jesus take control of my thoughts. I know that thinking those things was not right. It took so much time and energy to obsess over something so trivial while God was moving mountains the whole time anyway. And I will always be thankful for God bringing each person into our lives because their funding brought us our Kalkidan. And she saved us in so many ways.
*Comments have been turned off because I don't need anyone's negative thoughts on my old ways of thinking. Thanks for understanding!*
