Empowered to Connect Conference Recap

The last two weeks have been two of the busiest we've had all year so I am late on posting this.  There are so many updates to share! I'll start with the Empowered to Connect conference. It was held at Brentwood Baptist on September 14 and 15 and was eye-opening, informative and as the name promised, empowering.  It was a tremendous amount of information to try and take in over a short amount of time, but we both felt like it gave us a huge head start (coupled with our Parents in Process class we completed at Miriam's Promise).  We learned there are six primary risk factors that are predictors of  children from "hard places."  These include prenatal stress, difficult or traumatic labor or birth, medical trauma early in life, abuse, neglect and trauma.  One of our biggest takeaways was the realization that even if we get our baby at a very young age, there are still issues that we need to be prepared for due to the biological mom's prenatal history and birth.  Also, the importance of communication can't be stressed enough--and not just routine parent/child communication, but rather a very specific style of parenting communication.  The featured speaker for most of the event was Dr. Karen Purvis (who I swear must be the Baby Whisperer).  She and Dr. David Cross, both at the TCU Institute of Child Development,  developed the Trust-Based Relational Intervention model,  an emerging intervention for a wide range of childhood behavioral problems.  In addition to several lectures by Dr. Purvis, we watched lots of DVD clips of children who were at her summer camp.  It was amazing to watch the skills actually in action and how they worked so effectively.  Austin and I agreed that we want to attend more training and plan to do so annually (similar to how we do our marriage conferences) as this will be a lifelong learning process for us. We even discussed wanting our families to read the book, The Connected Child, to get a better understanding of how our parenting style will look different. 

Other important things over the last few weeks--Austin started his new job!  He is officially a firefighter with the city of Franklin.  He will spend the next ten weeks in the fire academy.  I am beyond proud of him and my heart swells with pride every time I think about how hard he worked, how he never gave up and most importantly, how he is giving God all the glory.  I am confident he has been placed in this role for a very special reason.  I just returned on Sunday from Utah after spending five days in Sundance for my Green Smoothie Girl coach certification.  It was an amazing trip and I have so many ideas swirling in my head on how it will play out moving forward.  First and foremost, I want to be able to bring in some extra income to help fund our adoption.  I am so excited about the opportunity and can't wait to get started!  

Finally, we received news this week that there are moms at the missionary home in Taiwan that are ready to select families.  We were asked to send in a photo of us with a brief description (max of seven sentences) describing us as a family.  In one short paragraph, we tried to summarize our sincere desire to be parents and how we have an amazing group of friends and family just waiting to welcome our little one to his or her forever home.  Our prayer is that God will move the heart of one of these moms and she will give us the honor of raising her precious baby.  Even more importantly, our prayer is that the mom will see the love of Christ lived out through adoption process.   We aren't sure what this means in terms of how quickly we might receive a referral, however, we continue to rest in God's perfect timing and realize that it will all happen according to His schedule. 

Love and hugs! 

A Bowl Full of Green Beads

On Tuesday night, Austin and I finished our second Parents in Progress class.  This is a parenting series that our home study agency (Miriam's Promise) requires for all families that are adopting internationally. Not only are we learning a lot, we also get to spend time with other adoptive parents (which is awesome).  So far, we've covered a range of topics:  adoption losses and gains, bonding, attachment and the impact of a transracial/transcultural adoption.  The topics have been very helpful and forced us to really begin to process the challenges we might face and how we can best prepare.  The topic last night was particularly challenging when we began to discuss the impact of transracial/transcultural adoption on adopted children and families.  During our home study process, we had to describe the cultural makeup of our community, neighborhood and social circle.  While we both feel our community will be open and accepting, we did an activity last night that really caused us to stop and take notice. 

Our really green bowl of beads

Each couple was given a cup with a variety of colored beads.  Each color bead represented a different racial or cultural group.  One of the class facilitators read off a list of categories and you were to add a bead to your cup that represented the race.  The list of categories included your immediate neighbors, your physician, your dentist, the three couples you spend the most time with, your supervisor at work, extended family, restaurants you frequent, etc.  As each category was named, Austin and noticed how......really green our bowl was turning (green was for Caucasian).  As we drove home after class, we had a honest conversation about what this activity brought up for us.  The bottom line is we are going to be a transracial/transcultural family and we would love for our child to be raised in a diverse environment.  My wish is for us to live in a neighborhood where families don't all look the same, where differences are the norm rather than the exception.  Austin and I realize that where we currently live may not provide the level of diversity that we would hope for.  Don't get me wrong, regardless of where we live we can always be intentional about exposing our child by attending cultural events, volunteering in our community, traveling, etc.  The other question I wrestled with is had we been able to have a biological child, would I still have this desire?  If I was being honest, I would say probably not.  It's so easy to fall into a pattern and then step out of it to see we've created a bubble--one where everyone is the same, houses look alike, children dress alike, we do the same type of social activities and we are rarely exposed to people different than us.  At this point, we aren't sure what all this means for us.  Do we want to move before the baby comes home?  If yes, what area of Nashville do we want to move to?  Do we just stay where we are until our baby comes home?  No easy decisions but we are excited about what this could open up for us.  

I read an article this week from Empowered to Connect that said  "We quickly come to realize that it is not so much what happens to us that creates the meaning in our story, but what God is doing in and through us."  This is just another example of God working in us as we continue down this journey.  I know with each lesson, He is shaping us to be the parents (and people) He'd have us to be.