“Honesty is the best policy.” How many times have we heard that line? But is it? IS Honesty the best policy. Yes it is, but there are many different levels of honesty.
I’ve sat on this post, so far, the longest amount of time. The Home Study is designed to dig out all the elements of your life so that you can best be matched to a child with similar problems/personalities. Sounds reasonable. Until you try to do that with a complete stranger - your home study specialist.
I’ve debated what to put in this post. There are things from my past that help others realize I’m not a spoiled white girl that was raised in the lap of luxury with a silver spoon in her mouth. Far from it! But when people repent and try to fix their past, is it good to go back and let it resurface over and over? For the world of adoption, yes. Yes it is required to relive and retell all that has ever happened to you to make you who you are today. Because the state needs to know how you’ve overcome your past hurts. They need to know how you succeeded and how you are going to help a child/children overcome the same problems. There are many many details that had to be shared with Doug, our case worker. For this post, I’m going to leave the details out.
Suffice it to say, I’ve suffered every form of abuse - verbal, physical, emotional and sexual. You don’t need to know specifics, who, when and where. You just need to know that I’ve survived all of these things. And Scott has been subjected to verbal, physical and emotional abuses. I’m grateful he never suffered from being sexually abused. And, as strange as it sounds, I’m grateful for the things that have happened to me.
WHAT?!!? Grateful - she’s really nuts now. We thought she was crazy before. You know, having 4 kids and then wanting to adopt more! But now she’s actually grateful for abuse!??! e.x.p.l.a.i.n.
Have you ever sat with someone and watched them cry over a hurt and have had absolutely no idea how to help them because you can’t even imagine what they’ve gone through, much less relate? Or the other side of it, have you known exactly how to help them because you’ve been there, done that, don’t even ask for a t-shirt? I HATE feeling out of control!! And I don’t like to see others suffer. So if something bad from my past can help someone else overcome theirs, then I am indeed grateful that it happened.
Scott and I had to come to terms with our pasts, how our parents raised us, what we’d keep, what we have kept and how we’ve dealt with the stuff we didn’t want to keep. We realized that there were good things about our childhoods that we hoped our children would have. And there were many other things that we had already strived to keep out. And we've watched other parents saying to ourselves "we want to do that when we have kids." It's all a balancing act and the state wants to know how you are going to balance. If children are already in your home, then there is proof that you have at least a tiny bit of experience raising children.
There are some things that the home study with the state requires that border on the ridiculous. Ex: - prepping the house. I’ve never had kids prone to pulling things out from under the sinks. And frankly, I hate under cabinet locks. They pinch your fingers and end up breaking more often than not. But each sink now has locks. Alarms were updated and installed, fire extinguisher purchased, emergency ladder for the second floor, US life ring (an official one) was purchased along with “12 feet of safety line.” 12 feet, not 11 and 1/2. Got it.....12 feet. :) And the funniest thing to have to be fixed......the sign by the pool that reads “Call 911 in emergencies.” yep. Remember it’s 911. Ok, kiddies. Don’t forget.
Reliving the past is hard. Remembering all the things that your parents didn’t do right can cause problems with already strained relationships. Remembering what happened to you isn’t easy. Looking at your kids and knowing you screwed some things up that you now have to fix is also a hard reality. Hard.....but not impossible. And it Sure makes you realize how important repentance and forgiveness are. It sure does help make the atonement real. And very personal.
So what did I take away from the home study experience......
1. When you start working on the 11 pages of personal history that's taken you 6 hours to compose - save it. Save it again in a different spot on your computer, then email to your spouse or a friend cause it really sucks when you lose it all and have to start over! lol
2. Your past is just that - yours. And it defines who you are and how you've become the man or women you are today. Embrace it. Learn from it. Then forgive.
3. Embrace your spouses past. Scott and I have never kept secrets from each other. We already knew about all the fallacies from our pasts. All the mistakes we'd made. This was a good reminder of where we came from. It strengthened our relationship to remember all we'd been through together.
4. Our children have had to learn how to cope with being moved around most of their lives. C went to a different elementary for the first 5 years of her schooling. To this day she gets really stressed out 3 weeks before school starts. It's not pretty in our house. E went from being potty trained at 2, to peeing on the floor behind the couch at 3 1/2. We had to double his size 4 pants and shorts wardrobe to accommodate all the clothing in the wash. We still haven't gotten all the stains out of the carpets from when he 'colored' on them with halloween face paint or permanent markers. We learned the symptoms of ADD and how J has some of those tendencies and we're adjusting accordingly. And learning to adjust his diet to help relieve some of his irritable bowel syndrome. And that A screamed everyday all day for the first 5 years of his life. And we survived! We learned and lived and learned some more. And our children are better for it. And we're better for it.
5. Remembering your past problems sucks. However, I have some REALLY great friends who called me out of the blue to "see how I was doing." Heavenly Father knew just when to send them. And that I really needed to be reminded of friendships and their great ability to rescue a hurting heart. I love my friends for that!
6. You are not alone. You are never alone. And Heavenly Father, our ultimate creator, knows each of those tiny details, each happy, each sad, each joy and each sorrow. And He gave us an older brother to be our ultimate example.
So yes, reliving the past and scrambling to get your house up to code isn't pretty. But it isn't the end of the world either.
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