My mother was adopted, so I've always been interested in understanding how people feel about adoption. I was excited to be given the opportunity to review Forever Mom, What To Expect When You're Adopting by Mary Ostyn from BookLookBloggers.com.
The story shares her personal journey of adoption and how she loves to educate others during their possible adoption process. During the book I highlighted my favorite heartfelt passages:
God has helped me see my own life more clearly, helped me better see my children's hearts, helped me become more the mother I wanted to be all along.
I gave up and just prayed, not only for the baby who by this time seemed alive in my heart but for unity between us. If it was really God who'd put adoption on my heart.
John began, now and then, to ask little questions about adoption. I'd answer, heart leaping hopefully.
Could he seriously be considering it, or was my wishful heart running away with me again?
When the airplane left the tarmac in Soeul, I cried again, overwhelmed to be taking this child away from the land where he'd been born, from the mother
who'd given him life, from the foster mom who loved him so, but not from the God who created him. Josh was sleeping, peacefully clueless, but my heart was ripped wide open.
My heart knew no distinction between birth and adoption.
Fifteen months later, another waiting child photo did something to my heart, the child was also from Korea.
She had mom/child bonding problems with her second adopted son. When I tried to smile into his eyes - trying to make that heart-to-heart connection--his eyes shuttered away, avoiding me. She referenced a great website www.empoweredtoconnect.org
Attachment, after all, is a relationship---a two way street. I hadn't realized before that a mother falls in love with her baby partly because of the loveable things the baby does in response to mom's overtures---nestling in, quieting when being cuddled, enjoying being fed, smiling and cooing, preferring mom above everyone. Sure, motherhood is exhausting, but the very responsiveness of the baby pays mom dividends and fuels mom's desire to nuture.
I don't know why God chose to allow us to parent these precious ones instead of their families, but I trust His providence, and I see His leading all the way.
But as aware as I am of the gift that our kids are to us, I also wish I'd been better prepared for the complexity of the job, for the layers of emotion I'd need to sort through both in my own heart and in the hearts of my children.
I love seeing how God ignites different passions in different hearts.
To learn more about the author, Mary Ostyn, go to www.forevermombook.com. Mary Ostyn offers encouragement and practical help to mothers in her books, on her blog owlhaven.net, and at adoption and homeschooling conferences across the U.S. She lives with her high school sweetheart in Nampa, Idaho, where she homeschools the youngest six of their ten children, including four daughters born in Ethiopia and two sons born in South Korea.
xoxo,
