As much as it’s hard to believe that we’ve had Maylia with us for a week, in some ways it’s even harder to believe that she hasn’t always been part of our family. We feel so comfortable together and feel that we intuitively know her and instinctively love her. The fact that she’s ridiculously cute, precocious and a shameless flirt with her father doesn’t hurt either!
Today we headed out as a group to the International SOS clinic. Canadian Visa applications require a medical check-up before you can submit your application so we stopped by the clinic to ( hopefully) give Maylia the clearance she needed to come to Canada.
The clinic wasn’t far and, as we waited in the children’s play/waiting area, a number of other adoptive families came in, presumably to do the same thing we were. We learned they were all Canadian too -- from Montreal. There were 4 new daughters and one new son -- all the first children in their families.
I have often bemoaned the length of time it has taken for us to adopt -- the weeks and months of years of waiting, but speaking to these families today put a quick end to my complaints. Most of these families had been waiting for 7 years...and one of them had been waiting for 8. The reason was that all of them had applied under the regular China program -- healthy infant adoption with no special needs ( at least none that have yet to be identified).
Once again Todd and I considered our luck and counted our blessings. Even though we began our adoption application 5 years ago, it was only 2 and 1/2 years if we looked just at the China portion of our application ( we were originally trying to adopt from Thailand when we started 5 years ago). And even though we had adopted as part of the Waiting Child program -- which places older children with correctible medical needs -- here we have this little girl which, for all intents and purposes seems to have very little if any health problems whatsoever ( more on those later).
The other thing to consider too is, that even if the physical challenges are identified, there might be a number of cognitive or challenges that aren’t. We learned that with Steele. If we were to categorize him he would have been under a healthy infant adoption -- because the Autism would not have been known until much later.
But what we also learned from Steele , and much more importantly, is that, special needs does not identify a deficiency or weakness. In fact, quite the opposite. The parlance of the day often makes critical reference to the word ‘special’ but truly there is something exceptional, unique, even remarkable about these kids who have been blessed with these challenges. Surely God has given them weaknesses as defined by the standards of our day. But it is more than just through His mercy that he has compensated them with extraordinary gifts and abilities that go far beyond the challenges they have.
Like the scripture in Ether says: And if men come unto me I will show unto them their aweakness. I bgive unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my cgrace is sufficient for all men that dhumble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make eweak things become strong unto them.
Aside from the blessing of these unique children, Todd and I feel also blessed for what these kids require of us as parents. We are far better parents than we would be if we had children with lesser challenges. We too have been compelled to be humble as we’ve had to rely on the Lord and on each other to meet these challenges.
We have always taught Steele to be proud of his Autism and to never be ashamed to identify himself by it. One of my favourite Steele moments was when he came home from school one day and told us that he had been learning about Autism in class.
“ It’s part of the way the brain works,” he said as he told us a few more details about the class discussion. “But do you know what the best news is?” he exclaimed as he raised his hands in the air, “there’s no known cure!”
Now that’s what I call Awe-tism.
Maylia, though she has a couple of small medical issues, will also face some difficulties as she grows up as she understands more and more about her adoption, and what that means. She will have to forge her identity both in spite of but more especially because of being adopted. I hope we can teach her too that her ‘special need’ is what makes her special indeed. That her adoption is both a gift and a blessing.
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