I so admire this couple that is dedicated to raising medically needy babies. The longer I’m in the adoption world, the more I’ve met families likes this, and I’m always impressed.

A family with 14 special needs children stayed with us for a week recently and I was amazed at the amount of work required in tending to medical needs children. My life looked like a walk in the park in comparison.

Just as I often hear, “I could never do what you do,” this is all I can do. I am not knowledgeable enough, nor medically trained, nor in any way competent enough to undertake such paramount medical responsibilities.

Part of being able to maintain a positive attitude, in spite of my family’s many difficulties and innate struggles, comes from my huge curiosity about the world and even more so, the way I am daily impressed by all that I cannot do in life. I love the TV shows about how stuff is made, I’m fascinated by factory tours, and I love reading biographies and interviews with entrepreneurs and learning how their many ideas came to pass.

I approached the adoption of older children in a similar manner. I had an idea in my mind, a goal I wanted to accomplish, and I set about with a great deal of determination to get the job done.

In retrospect, the adoptions were the easy part, the mountains of paperwork in no way compared to the years I’d later spend in therapy sessions with my children, and those home visits that inspect one’s abode? Oh honey, that was the last time my home was presentable, the kids moved in and immediately proceeded to dismantle it chunk of sheetrock by chunk.

I feel that I was well-trained in MAPP, well read, and willing and able to take on the world.

Now I feel like I was hit by a train, but I am still standing, still loving my children, and only a little less willing to take on the entire world.

I’ve since learned that there are so many areas in adoption that I would not have done well in, that I was not called by God at all to participate in, but that I ended up where I should be, with the kids I should be parenting.

If I could have changed anything along the way it would only have been my own attitude, where I would have learned to have been more forgiving, more flexible and more focused on the big picture. The details that often tripped me up weren’t necessarily that important in the long run.