This has been one challenging week, it is a good thing our family is heading to Branson for eight days of R & R starting Saturday! We plan to re-connect with friends there who are also adoptive parents of three children around the same ages as ours. Part of the plan is to attempt to pull our heads above all the recent stresses, and find our way back to the real reasons that we chose to adopt our children in the first place, to be a family.

When I was a young girl I know I dreamed of becoming a mommy, I think I even imagined adopting one or two of what would be a large brood. While I was devastated that I could not conceive, we quickly moved forward with adoption plans, and each of our children were welcomed with all the love, anticipation, and joy any that any parents would experience.

As our children have grown, not only have my husband and I easily fallen into taking our many blessings for granted, we have also experienced an unexpected amount of, well... experiencing the unexpected. With the joy of having our children there have also been some sad and difficult issues, ones we never could have anticipated when our journey began.

Never did we dream that our second child was so damaged before she was even born. We naively believed that being present from the time of her birth, meant we had somehow avoided any issues she might have had to deal with if she had perhaps been involuntarily removed and been a foster child. Nothing prepared us for the reality that has become our daily lives, struggling to mend a fractured child, while trying to keep the dream of our beautiful family intact.

All the love and joy of family can all too easily be weighed down with the difficulties and struggles in life, that is if you allow it. As much as we can’t change some things about our daughter’s troubles and our family life in general, we need to give ourselves permission to let it go, and not let it become our sole focus. We entered into our adoption journey to experience the joy of parenting and family, and this next week we aim to reclaim that joy!

This little trip we will be taking is really more than we can afford financially, but not going is also something we cannot afford to do right now emotionally. We need to spend time away to remember why it was that we originally came together as a family, and how much we do love our children. This Love Thursday I am thinking of only one thing, our children, our little family, and how important they are to me.

Happy Love Thursday!

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Photo- Copyright Deb Donatti 2007