an open letter to Pat Robertson, from the adoptive mother of a child with brain damage

Dear Mr. Robertson,

I want you to look at this face.

Isn't she darling?

I want you to look at her because that's the face that came to mind when I heard your words yesterday.

On The 700 Club, you answered a question from a single mother of three children, each adopted from a different country. This mother wrote in for help understanding why the men she dated always left as soon as they found out that her daughter were adopted.

Your response? "A man doesn't want to take on the United Nations." And "you don't know what problems" there will be when you adopt. You continued with the cautionary tale of a family you know who adopted a "child [who] had brain damage, you know, grew up weird." As you disagreed with your co-host, you excused your comments by saying, "you just never know what's been done to a child before you get that child: what kind of sexual abuse there has been, what kind of cruelty, what kind of food deprivation."

I want you to know this: We didn't adopt a problem. We adopted a child. She was knit together in her mother's womb, fearfully and wonderfully made. She is an image bearer of the one true God. She laughs at me, loves her brother and sister, and cries when she's hurting or hungry.

She was also born with brain damage. 

And we love her.

Perhaps I'm naive to be writing this letter to you. After all, a year ago you said that a man could divorce his wife with Alzheimer's because she was "not there" anymore, less of a person than she had been when she married him. Two years ago, you said adoption "can be a blessing if you get the right child." Perhaps I'm naive in thinking that Zoe's sweet face would change how you think and speak about orphans like her, but it's worth a try because God used her face (and is now using her life) to change us.

You said that we can help and love orphans but that doesn't mean we have to take them - and, in your words, their "problems" - into our homes. When my husband heard your words, he said "No, we don't have to do it. We get the privilege of doing it."

That's a real man. I'm thankful to be married to him and thankful to parent these three darlings with him.

You said your friend's child "grew up weird," and that's certainly a possibility for our kids too. If "weird" involves caring for orphans and widows in the name of Christ and laying down our lives for others as Christ did and believing God's Word to be true, then I pray you'll have plenty of reasons to call each of our children weird.

It surely wouldn't be the first time someone used that word to describe us.

Sincerely,
A mom who is blessed by all three of my children


PS - If you'd like to see a video of The 700 Club segment that prompted this post, here's the only version I can find right now.

an open letter to Pat Robertson, from the adoptive mother of a child with brain damage

Dear Mr. Robertson,

I want you to look at this face.

Isn't she darling?

I want you to look at her because that's the face that came to mind when I heard your words yesterday.

On The 700 Club, you answered a question from a single mother of three children, each adopted from a different country. This mother wrote in for help understanding why the men she dated always left as soon as they found out that her daughters were adopted.

Your response? "A man doesn't want to take on the United Nations." And "you don't know what problems" there will be when you adopt. You continued with the cautionary tale of a family you know who adopted a "child [who] had brain damage, you know, grew up weird." As you disagreed with your co-host, you excused your comments by saying, "you just never know what's been done to a child before you get that child: what kind of sexual abuse there has been, what kind of cruelty, what kind of food deprivation."

I want you to know this: We didn't adopt a problem. We adopted a child. She was knit together in her mother's womb, fearfully and wonderfully made. She is an image bearer of the one true God. She laughs at me, loves her brother and sister, and cries when she's hurting or hungry.

She was also born with brain damage. 

And we love her.

Perhaps I'm naive to be writing this letter to you. After all, a year ago you said that a man could divorce his wife with Alzheimer's because she was "not there" anymore, less of a person than she had been when she married him. Two years ago, you said adoption "can be a blessing if you get the right child." Perhaps I'm naive in thinking that Zoe's sweet face would change how you think and speak about orphans like her, but it's worth a try because God used her face (and is now using her life) to change us.

You said that we can help and love orphans but that doesn't mean we have to take them - and, in your words, their "problems" - into our homes. When my husband heard your words, he said "No, we don't have to do it. We get the privilege of doing it."

That's a real man. I'm thankful to be married to him and thankful to parent these three darlings with him.

You said your friend's child "grew up weird," and that's certainly a possibility for our kids too. If "weird" involves caring for orphans and widows in the name of Christ and laying down our lives for others as Christ did and believing God's Word to be true, then I pray you'll have plenty of reasons to call each of our children weird.

It surely wouldn't be the first time someone used that word to describe us.

Sincerely,
A mom who is blessed by all three of my children


PS - If you'd like to see a video of The 700 Club segment that prompted this post, here's the only version I can find right now.

the adventure that was Zoe's MRI...

I already told you about the amazing results. Every day Zoe surprises us with one more things she has learned to do, and it's refreshing to operate with no expectations or worries about development.

(By that, I mean that we don't analyze "should she be sitting up by now?" or "is she falling behind?" We know our girl has some brain damage, and that frees us to just let her do her own thing developmentally without superimposing our concerns onto her abilities. It's a relief as a mom, in so many ways.)

On the day of the MRI, we were blessed to just leave for the hospital, because one of our old neighbors came and stayed the night at the house so that she could care for the big kids in the morning. (And then she stayed until about 5pm or so to help me throughout the day. We might have good neighbors at our new place, but we sadly left the best neighbors ever in the old 'hood.)

We arrived, following the signs to P3.

I made Lee slow to almost a complete stop so I could take a picture of this sign, because it made me chuckle.

And it's a darn good thing I did, because as I snapped the picture, we heard a loud clunk.

You can't see it in the picture, but that clearance bar was swinging (this, after we backed out of the deck). The picture is blurry because I was laughing.

FYI, the P3 parking deck is not tall enough to accommodate Suburbans, and we think the parking attendant's humor for the day is watching big vehicles try to drive in, given that he had the chance to stop us but didn't..

After we parked elsewhere, the rest of the check-in procedure was easy peasy. Our girl - not showing signs of hunger at all, thank you Jesus - hung out with Daddy and checked out her reflection in the glass.

Oh, how I love watching him fall deeper and deeper in love with her. See that smile on his face?

Then again, who wouldn't love that face? She's a cutie.

And she knows it.

In the spirit of Jocelyn, who loves giving Zoe bunny ears in pictures, Daddy got in touch with his immature side.

"Mommy, can you ask Daddy to act like a grown-up?"

I checked her in and placed the medical bracelet on her little ankle.

And, yep, she was still in a good mood!

Even when Daddy accidentally banged her head into this picture as she was fascinated by her reflection.

Meanwhile, I assumed this sign wasn't directed at me. I think having your baby girl sedated grants you photography approval.

We sat in the same waiting room where we had been when Robbie had his MRI, and then we were escorted back to the same pre-procedure room with nautical murals.

Robbie had been fascinated by the oxygen light on his toe prior to his MRI, so I had to take the picture of Zoe's! She didn't really care about it, though.

She did, however, like her hospital gown and want to play with it instead of wearing it.

But the murals were enough to distract her long enough for Daddy to dress her.

I love seeing her smile up at him.

While it looks like she's yawning here, she's actually laughing in anticipation of Daddy's tickling.

Gotta keep her modest by tying the back closed!

I think her hunger was hitting her at this point, but it was time for her to get sedated - first by mask, then by IV. (She takes after me - a genetic thing, of course - in having terrible veins, because it took seven sticks in her hands and feet before they placed the IV. Made me thankful she was already sedated before that began and I was in the waiting room instead of watching them use her as a pin cushion.)

Speaking of the little mask, here it is! We were brought back just before she woke up.

The rules require a baby to drink a few ounces of a clear liquid like Pedialyte before going home.

This is what she thinks of Pedialyte.

So they broke the rules and just let us feed her formula, even though it would make everything yuckier if she threw up due to the anesthesia. (By the way, according to the nurse, Zoe got the same sort of drugs that killed Michael Jackson. Of course, not in the same doses or reckless manner, the nurse made sure to add.)

As we left, Zoe was supposed to be in the stroller we were told to bring with us. But when a sleepy baby girl is cuddled up to Daddy, they let that rule slide too.

And then we might have pretended that Jubala was on the way home from the hospital - it isn't - because Mama needed her beloved iced almond latte to go.

The end.

our morning around here...

fun with our playmat (thank you, Goodwill, for this find!)

sisters

distracted by doggie

oh, yeah. there's mom too.

don't you hate it when you focus so hard that your eyes cross?

fun!

meanwhile...

big sis set up a royal horse wedding (the pink one is the bride, brown one the groom, and small yellow one with a tutu is officiating)

the dog chewed on a dragon

and the boy cuddled with his blanket, undecided about whether or not the day was worth waking up for

why you might want to have tissue in hand if you ask me where Jocelyn is going to school this year

January of this year just wasn't a good month for blog posts.

I started the month with a post about a shirt's logo that I liked and a conversation that Lee and I had about it, and people were confused by the meaning of the shirt. (In case you're still wondering, the designer of it meant the logo to be a display love for people with special needs.)

I ended the month with a post about our adoption and home-selling plans, which was followed by a post in February with completely different plans. (Way, way, way better plans, because they included our news about expecting Zoe).

And in the middle of the month? A post in which I explained that we would be sending Jocelyn to public school. 

And now?

I honestly don't know.

Here's what I do know:

• None of the current options with our school district would work well for our girl. (We moved after the choice rounds in our district, which means you get offered whatever kindergarten seats are left over. At this point, that's one school that is way far away from our house. Thanks, but no thanks.)
• We're still unwilling to consider private school, not only because we're still uncomfortable with the exclusion of kids with special needs from the private school we would otherwise consider but also because we'd like to adopt again in the future (and if we do have to fundraise again to do so, we want to be able to clearly say that we've made financial choices to support our adoption before asking others to support it as well).
• Any of the charter schools we might have considered are currently full. 
• It looks like homeschooling is the only other option on the table.

We're concurrently making plans for what homeschooling would look like this year, with a planned start date of September 10, and watching the student seat availability reports for our school district in hopes that something will open up or come close enough to opening up for the student assignment folks to offer us a seat. 

I interrupt this post to remind all of you that I LIKE PLANS. God has clearly deemed that 2012 is the year of teaching me to hold plans loosely and be more flexible, but some days I just want to curl up in the fetal position while hugging a planner and pretending that I have some control over my life. I am thankful that God is in control, and I do know that His plans are so much better than mine, but that doesn't mean I'm not struggling with the loss of the plans I expected.

So when you ask where Jocelyn is going to school this year, please forgive me if I force a huge smile, proudly announce that I think we're homeschooling but I'm not really sure because I still kind of hope that Plan A of the public school we really like will work out, and then promptly burst into tears. 

(You think I kid. I assure you that I do not.)