There are things with an adopted child.
Things like teaching them the months of the year in order, at 15, because you realize they never learned them in their disrupted kindergarten years.
Things like not having the sweet momma memories of them sleeping in your arms, or holding your hand as they gaze lovingly up at you as toddlers.
Things like throwing the parenting rules out the window because most behavior comes from trauma and does not subscribe or respond to traditional parenting.
Things like not getting enough years because the healed self is just awakening, and they are leaving the home soon.
Things like knowing that someday we will try to find their bio parents and that is an okay thing for me and them.
But there are also the days.
The days when he asks why I don’t sit in with him and his therapist and says, “If I can’t tell you stuff then why would I tell anyone else”.
The days when you watch their God given gifts start to flourish and sit in wonder because these were not passed down through your DNA.
The days when you see a sliver of hope that the long nights of tears and prone prayers are exposing the butterfly that has been long dormant in his cocoon or is calming the raging storm that is constant inside his brain.
There are things with an adopted child.