Today the rain is coming down, the sky grey and somber. I am so tired of cold drab days and am so very ready for spring to arrive. While I know that the rain today is preparing the earth for that burst of life I so desperately want to see, it is hard none the less to sit here today in this dark, dreary place.

Some days I find myself sitting, waiting and thinking about a more “beautiful spring” in the world of adoption as well. The days when the sky is over cast and dark are many in this poorly understood and isolating corner of the human experience. Sometimes it can almost overwhelm the soul. If we could get past the misunderstandings and correct some of the injustices that too often occur, I think we might begin to see a ray of sun. I do believe the need for adoption would still exist, but perhaps we could make it more caring and companionate. Many would like adoption to go away completely and in a perfect world it would I suppose. This is not that perfect world.

When my husband and I finally decided to adopt ten years ago this month, it was not without a lot of thoughtful discussion and soul searching. At the time our “grey sky” was the prospect of a life without being able to love, nurture and parent children. That feeling was pretty cold and bleak, but the concept that we could offer through adoption those things we had to share with a child who needed them became encouraging. I really believe that anyone who has that love to share with a child should not give up on finding a way, and adoption is one way. So we proceeded to enter that stormy world of adoption.

Even though we had prepared ourselves, it was not nearly enough. Our first daughter arrived less than a month after we had begun our homestudy! Five years later another daughter joined us and a son just eighteen short months after her. Much of the time we have spent parenting has also been clouded with our own adoption learning process. We have made a ton of mistakes along the way. Sometimes the adoption community is relentlessly unforgiving about that. It can appear that you need to understand everything and how to do it so not to offend any of the involved parties right from the get go. That is impossible to do since there are so many deeply emotional views on adoption every where you turn, and that is just among those of us who have actually experienced it. When you add in all the misconceptions from people who have no adoption connection or education you might just feel the need to build an ark because that "adoption rain" will never seem to let up.

Today I am going to pull the cover over my head for awhile. Sometimes when you cannot stop the rain you just have to find something comforting to do till it goes away. I am hopeful tomorrow will see the sun come out again, the prospects look good. I have some living I need to do out there and I do not want the grey and somber mood of the rainy day, or the adoption world, to keep me out of that possible sunshine.