A Tough Job

DISCLAIMER: I wrote this post on one of the darker days in Mamaland. I think it's important to share these moments too as being a mom - and an adoptive mom - is not all sweetness and light, as much as we all wish it were! And yet, even in the storm, God Is - watching over us, restoring us again.

I hate to keep coming back to the same point again lest I become an annoying, whiny blogger but being a mom is so hard! It's not like I hadn't heard this before we got the kids but it is a totally different thing to live your life with the additional identity of "parent" attached to yourself. On a particularly rough day last week, my Facebook update asked "How many times in the next 18 - or maybe 80 - years will I feel like a crappy mom?" It was amazing how many comments I got from other mama friends of mine who all cited their own experiences feeling like "crappy moms" with kids of various ages. If the comments of my friends are indicative of what the general mom-ulation experiences emotionally (I can really only comment on the mom-ulation as that's my crowd), many of us are having a hard time living up to our own expectations of what a "good mom" should be like. Add to that general societal pressures and expectations and you end up with enough guilt to go around for the whole lot of us. And then there's what we adoptive moms get to add to the growing pile...the fact that our children aren't biologically ours and, if your family looks like ours, everyone knows it. It's hard for me not to feel on "crappy mom days" like maybe I was never meant to be a mom. If your children are biologically yours, it is almost as if that serves to legitimize you as a mom on some level. Because you were capable of producing them, even if you may not be a great parent, you were still meant to have your children. With adoption, God makes the way for your adoption to come to fruition just like He does in creating a child in the womb but you have to take various purposed steps to make it happen. You have to choose to sign up to be a parent to someone else's biological kids thinking that on some planet somewhere you might - by God's grace - not be half-bad at the job (there are no rhythm-method oopsies in adoption). "Oops, honey. I guess we're adopting!" just does not happen in the adoption experience. So on the bad days, it's hard not to think to yourself "Maybe that social worker shouldn't have approved our homestudy." For me, I also wrestle with the fact that I am trying to raise another woman's birth child and honor her memory by doing my very best to stand in her place - doing what she will never have the opportunity to do as much as she would have coveted that chance. Sometimes I fall pretty short - at least in my own mind.

I was talking to a friend today who recently adopted Ethiopian twins about what it is like to be a transracial family out in public. I explained how I do not take my girls out in public without making sure that their hair is reshaped a bit (naps cause major "mushed 'fro") and that they at least have on something decent. I'm not fanatical about this, but it is certainly something I am aware of. I do this because I know that many people will be looking at us and at my girls in particular when we are out in public. In the African-American community, taking appropriate care of your children's hair is often taken as a sign of good parenting and love for one's children. The last thing I want to look like is some white mama who is clueless about how to care for her African-American children. I think this too, like my concerns about being a "crappy mom", comes down to additional issues of perceptions of legitimacy. Because everyone knows these children are not yours biologically, I think it's hard as a new adoptive mom not to feel like you have to make your case to outside world "See, I'm really a mom and I'm doing a good job." Hence, I probably spend a little more on their clothes than I need to (the fact that they are beyond cute doesn't help here either!) but in making sure they appear well-kept, I am able to demonstrate to a highly inquisitive and often judging public, at least on some level, that my children are loved. I guess in way that serves to help make me feel legit as a mom. I know I shouldn't care what others think but this is my life and it's the lives of my children and that is very personal. It's hard to blow off stuff that relates to whether or not others see you as a real family or not.

A friend reminded me on one of my low point days that Satan wants to attack the good work that God is doing in and through our family. I actually wrote about that in a blog post months ago but perhaps I need to be reminded of that now. By choosing to be a very public example of God's love, we as adoptive families are putting ourselves on the "front lines" in a spiritual battle against poverty, disease, injustice and apathy (among other things!). It gives me peace to know that when we feel tired and drained - whether it be from the day in-day out pragmatic struggles of parenting (i.e. did my eldest daughter really just have an accident on the floor and did my curious younger daughter really just run into the room to check out the action only to slip and fall, soaking herself in the yellow puddle?) or from the anxiety that comes with self-doubt about your role as mother, God is faithful. Last week, I came across this very familiar verse from Psalm 23 and was reminded again that God does restore our souls and give us the rejuvenation we need for this very unique journey.

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul."


We continue to pray about whether or not to adopt again or have a birth child. I told Davis the other day that I really sense that there is going to be another child in our family. Davis asked me in response, "Well, what color is that child?" I told him that if you asked me today, the answer would be brown. So we continue to pray...

And speaking of sweetness and light...