Don’t Call my Little Girl a Burden

I sometimes write a little adoption how-to guide in my head as advice to share with anyone else who may want to take this journey after us. It goes something like this: 1. Decide you’re going to adopt. Brainstorm a brilliant fundraising scheme and announce your plans to the world. 2. Have a medical crisis which renders your plan impossible just as you’re gaining momentum and realize you had no fallback. 3. Fall hopelessly to your knees and begin begging for wisdom from Heaven and providential guidance because you have no idea what you’re doing after all and everyone you know knows about your adoption plans because you’ve talked about it non-stop for weeks. 4. Open your eyes to realize you’re surrounded by a whole community of people who love children and that you’re actually not in this alone . 5. Learn to let go of your need to control your own universe and allow others to step in and help, offer skills, ideas and suggestions, and bless your soul in ways you could have never seen coming. That’s where we are now in this fundraising process. Our journey is starting to develop a life of its own, and we’re getting to know people pretty well who we casually passed in the halls at church before, finding that we’re connected and our lives are intersecting as we all journey together to care for children at home and abroad. Steve and I have found such comfort in sharing the burden with others, hearing their stories, learning from them, brainstorming with them, and working side-by-side with them to bring home a child we’ve never met, who has three big brothers waiting to watch out for her! One of the trickiest parts of this fundraising venture is trying to find the balance between extreme asceticism and obnoxious over indulgence. I particularly struggle with wanting to scale back, downsize, and cut spending, while at the same time wanting to get the most out of these years with the children we have now, expose them to new things, take them on adventures, and buy them toys and overpriced ice cream cones because it’s summer and it’s fun! Couple that with the fact that our bills didn’t go away or our debt magically disappear, and the routine expenses like childcare, the mortgage, car payment, etc., and it’s easy to feel caught in the middle of an emotional tug-of-war that serves no purpose other than to defeat, destroy, and damage any progress that we’ve made. I, in particular, worry too much about what other people will think if I spend a few dollars on ourselves, and then announce a fundraiser three days later. All of this came into sharp focus for Steve and I a few weeks ago when we took a family vacation. (Yes, there was mental anguish in making that decision for the very reasons I described above.) It had been six years since we’d taken a real vacation, and the boys were just the right age, so we went to Disney World and took advantage of every discount we could find! One such discount was our lodging. We could stay in a lovely time share complex at a deeply discounted rate if we would simply endure a ninety-minute “no pressure” sales presentation. Thus, we found ourselves on a Thursday morning sitting down to have breakfast with a very convincing sales guy who told us all about the benefits of time share ownership, frequent vacationing and travel, and all the ways it could pay for itself and we could make it work for us and earn money off it. It was sooooooo easy. Now, to be fair, we never had any intention of buying the time share. So when the sales guy started waxing eloquently about all the wonderful resorts they had around the world that would be at our disposal, I threw him a curve ball and started making him look through his book for five-star resorts in third world countries since that’s the next big trip on our agenda. Spoiler alert….there were none in any of the places we were thinking about going! (I’m sure this is the point at which he started to dislike us.) We explained to him that we were adopting, and he expressed supportive words, saying he was also considering adoption, and we had a friendly conversation about that for a few moments, and he went back to his sales pitch. A few moments later, he left us alone to talk about his rock bottom prices and offer that was just too good to refuse. Steve asked me what I was thinking, and I told him that I felt like I was staring right into the face of the very dilemma I’ve struggled with for all these months. This was a beautiful, fantastic offer. It was right there within our grasp for the taking, and, maybe at another time in our lives, we’d jump at it. There’s certainly nothing evil or immoral about vacationing with your family! Please don’t think for a minute that I resent or hold any bad feelings against timeshare owners. It’s just not right for us – not now. It’s completely the opposite direction of the path we’re choosing to take, one where we’re trying to teach our children about sacrificing, loving others above self, and giving. I said to Steve, “Can you imagine us going back home to our adoption rummage sale in two days and saying, Please give us your money, we just bought a timeshare!”” When phrased like that, it was a no-brainer for us; thanks for the offer, but not this time. Here’s the point of the story. Steve tried to diplomatically explain to the salesperson why we were turning him down, and he turned instantly from a fellow church-going adoption advocate to an angry and demeaning timeshare associate. Steve had said to him that perhaps a few years from now, after the adoption, this would appeal to us, but not now, to which he replied, ”You think you could afford it then after you bring home another child and that extra burden, that you could afford it then but you can’t afford it now?” I didn’t realize it at the time, but that flipped a switch in Steve’s mind, and and he became immediately defensive and insulted by the man’s words. He told me later that in his mind he thought, “Don’t call my little girl a burden.” There was no more debating for us, we were done with that presentation. Earlier in the week, we had been in a Disney Christmas store and I had been admiring princess ornaments, and beginning feeling pangs of homesickness for this child whose skin color I don’t even know yet. I kept thinking about how different this trip would be if she were with us, and wanted to do something for her, to tell her I am thinking of her even now. That was my first real emotional connection to her in that way, and it was a little startling, and yet something I think is a seed planted in my heart to help me develop a mother’s love for her and fight as hard as I have to fight to go get her. Following that experience, Steve and I are both intensely motivated to get this fundraising thing moving! We got off the plane back to Ohio, drove home long enough to change our shoes, and immediately went to the church to help set up for our rummage sale the next day. We had a crew of amazing people work with us over the next two days to set up, clean up, staff, organize, price, sort, sell, deliver, move heavy things, and interact with customers. We have raised over $1,900.00 total from that effort, most of it that day and a little by Craig’s List afterward, and we continue to advertise some remaining items, so we hope that number will continue to climb. A week or so after that, we launched an on-line fundraiser, which is going on now. A friend of mine is a Tastefully Simple consultant in West Virginia. She offered to do an on-line party for me, giving me what she would normally earn as the consultant to help with the adoption account. We have the link posted on Facebook and are asking people to order and to share the link with anyone who cares about adoption or just likes food! I have no idea what to expect from this, but every little bit helps. Trevor’s kindergarten teacher had a phrase I think of a lot lately. She was teaching them to read by “hunks and chunks,” meaning letter clusters and phonetic combinations. We are fundraising by hunks and chunks. Sometimes it’s a ten cent donation from a little girl with a ceramic angel in her hand, and sometimes it’s a check for a much larger amount, but it’s all working together toward one goal, and the account is continuing to grow. I must confess, fundraising is exhausting. I am mentally tired, and I do plan to take a break from it when the school fundraising starts up. I do not want to badger my friends and family to death and I realize that not everyone feels the burning need to see that bank account sky rocket like I do, so I hope to find the balance there to between asking for help and driving people out of their minds. We need to get to the $10,000.00 mark before we can apply. We’re well over halfway there. Once we have applied, we can start our home study, after which we can begin applying for grants and adoption loans. We sincerely hope not to have to fundraise every single penny. Meanwhile, we continue to save and to brainstorm future events to inch closer to that goal. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please let us know! We’ve had some wonderful ideas that didn’t originate from the Shelton house, and I think we’re going to do some really neat things this fall and next spring, but we’ll wait to announce those until we get closer! Please continue to pray for us. We’ve got a long, long way to go! “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6 “Give thanks to the Lord. His love endures forever.”