This morning I was still having trouble calming down after last night. While everyone was at church, I tried to pray and open my scriptures, but I felt too upset and drained to focus.
I ended up googling my favorite YouTube channel, Cute Girls Hairstyles. I have felt very drawn to their videos lately. Normally I stop the videos as soon as the hairstyle is complete, but recently I let the video roll on, and imagine my shock when home videos popped up at the end showing Mindy’s black baby girl crawling. I had no idea she had adopted children!
Since I have been feeling that I want to adopt a black son next, I searched her website and found her nine-post series on her adoption journey. Mindy is LDS, and I was so moved by the spiritual components to her story. To be honest, I spent most of her story bawling my eyes out and feeling deeply touched by everything she wrote. My testimony that God’s hand is in all of our lives was strengthened by her words.
I also learned a LOT about adopting in Utah. We are so lucky because is is practically the best place in the U.S. to adopt, and women fly to this state all the time (or are flown in by adoption agencies/prospective parents) to give birth. Whereas in most states the birth mother must wait for five-seven days to sign away her child, here she can sign after twenty-four hours, making the process a lot less agonizing for everyone involved. (Apparently, if she changes her mind at the last minute, the prospective parents will not only experience heartbreak, but can lose thousands of dollars in the process.)
I learned some pretty messed up things too. For example, it is most expensive to adopt a white child, less expensive to adopt a hispanic child, and cheapest to adopt an African American child (because they are the least wanted and in most plentiful supply!!!!).
Anyway, after reading about her experience and researching the difficulties of international adoption (particularly from Nigeria, which is the country that I find most personally compelling), I have had a complete change of heart and feel very open to adopting in the country.
On a different note entirely, the girls almost got lost today. I had told them that under no circumstances were they to make a mess without cleaning it up. During nap time, they made a big milk mess, and then they decided that the only way to clean it up was to get their dad, who they thought was at church. (He was actually making house visits.)
At any rate, I saw them scooter around the corner and heard Lydia say they were going to church, but I didn’t think she could possibly be serious. I thought they were playing pretend. Finally, after they didn’t reappear for five minutes, I called Abe and had him pick up the girls. He found them, sure enough, en route to church. They had bumped into their Primary teacher on the way, and he was just starting to walk them home. Phew.
Sometimes I take our neighborhood for granted, but there is something serious to be said for knowing all of your neighbors. I remember being flabbergasted when my neighbor gave me a tour of all of the nearby cul-de-sacs and told me the life stories of every single family, plus the families in between. But now I could probably do the same thing. When my children got lost today, I panicked, but I would have panicked a lot more had I not known that we know almost all of the families between here and church, and someone was bound to see them and rescue them.
