Freak out Mode

This is a continuation of the last 3 posts so if you haven't read those yet it will make much more sense if you do! 

The first details we got on this boy were minimal.  Basic special needs and that's about it.  Enough for us to be willing to learn more.  The next bit of information we got was the profile emailed to me with the picture.  There were some things in there that were concerning to say the least.  Once the initial feelings of falling in love with a picture wore off the reality of what this child faces set in fast and furious.  I call it "freak out mode".  It is that time when you have to come face to face with some harsh realities about why children come into state care.  These kids aren't there becuase they came from great situations.  This child's family has done some things that will impact him for life physically and psychologically.  On top of that he has a handful of special needs that are very different than what we have handled before.  We both needed time to thoroughly research each and every thing that was presented to us so that we could go into this as knowledgeable as possible.  It even turned out that Anya had a doctor's appointment this week so I was able to show it all to our pediatrician and get her take on it.  She pretty much had the same questions we did and warned us about the same things we were already concerned about.  In the end she was a great encouragement to us and had full confidence that if we chose to move forward we could handle it.  I got on the phone with some friends who have children from similar back grounds, and I've lived on the internet searching anything I can on children who live with the things this sweet boy is living with.

Finally, one day I sat on the phone with a friend and we had a great discussion about faith and life.  We got into a discussion about God giving good gifts.  In the discussion we talked about the HARD things God had put us through and how in the past we had seen "good" as equal with "easy".  Now we better understand that good can be very, very hard but it is still truly a good gift from God.  I shared with her that this child could grow to be 18 and Larry and I could look at each other and say "Why did we ever worry?  This child has been such an incredible blessing to us!"  Or we could be looking at each other and facing that fact that we have a child who is walking the same path his biological parents did, and he could cause our family a lot of pain.  Either way, if God chooses this boy for our family, we know that he is a GOOD gift from God.  We can't spend our days on the "what ifs".  We need to be educated and we need to be aware, but we don't need to fear what God has planned for our family.  Some right perspective is always good for snapping me out of freak out mode!

Now we wait for our social worker's next visit on Wednesday.  We are anxious to see if she has any other information for us at all.