My once rural, now affluent county has grown to now include about 25,000 people. I noticed today, after an entire day on the soccer fields, that a bunch of families have adopted girls from China. They’re all well-behaved, cute and great soccer players.

And I’m a little jealous.

When one doesn’t adopt from the foster care system, or one doesn’t adopt older children, one will naturally have an easier go of it. After 20 years of being neck deep in issues, often gasping for air, missing meals and being embarrassed way too often, I could use a breather.

One man was telling me that there seemed to be a great many adoptions lately at his church. That makes me happy for the children who are now getting families and I remind myself that I too once had a choice.

After an expensive, but paid for by my parents, adoption of a sibling group in Honduras in the 1980s, the rest of my children came from the United States foster care system. I was quickly blindsided by the issues that seemed relentless.

But now facing yet another graduation of one my daughters, another one next year, that’ll leave me with only 18 kids in school plus the others that are living in residential centers for varying reasons. I’ll only have 9 kids in the elementary school and 8 in the middle school. There’ll be only one in the high school unless some of the other older kids get it together enough to come home. It gets easier for us each day.

Reading this article today, admiring this woman’s fortitude and thinking about my upcoming years when the numbers at home dwindle, I see my life changing slowly.

I must have seen a dozen Chinese girls today with different families, smiling and well-behaved, not busting open each other’s lips like my sons have done on purpose out in public. No hollering politically incorrect and anatomically impossible phrases at each other, the parents as well were smiling while I flew from field to field, refereeing my own children and reminding them to save their issues for home puh-leeze.

Maybe, just maybe, my own sense of satisfaction at having survived our turmoil will make it all worth it for me and us in the end. Maybe I’ll have a larger sense of overall accomplishment from dragging these difficult kids into a fairly normal adulthood. My older kids have all made it, made me proud and given me beautiful grandchildren. This immensely challenging life has been mostly fun.

That’s what I’ll keep telling myself with a smile.