A Musing Maralee

August 18, 2022
by Maralee
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The “Forgotten” Baby Sibling in a Large Family

Today I was listening to a podcast I like when I heard something I didn’t like. They were talking about an amazing woman who has done so much good for her community, but they started it by saying she was the youngest of 12 children and made a comment about how little attention she must have received. Isn’t it so amazing that she’d grow up to become a woman of honor, of bravery, of conviction, of influence when she grew up in a home as the youngest of twelve?

I don’t find it surprising at all.

Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to be this 8th baby in this family I’m raising. What kind of ridiculous sense of self-worth and confidence would you have in the world to have this kind of upbringing? She is adored. ADORED. Every minute of every day. Her voice is heard and her needs are met. Although, not always be me.

I imagine that’s what’s confusing to people. How could a child who is the youngest of 12 (or the 8th of 8) get the parental attention every child obviously needs? The reality is that I do meet most of her needs. I feed her, I change her diapers and get her dressed about 95% of the time. If I’m in arms reach, she is usually in my arms. She has no doubt about how much I love her and she will ask for me when she wants me.

But there are times I am just not available. Someone needs homework help, or a ride to work, or they’ve had an injury, or dinner has to be made, or I’m in the bathroom. In those moments, this little lady has no shortage of people to love her and look after her. She feels safe with them and they fight over who gets to be the one to help her with whatever she needs.

She exists in a world where she has her own fan club. Her face is someone’s home screen on their school computer. If she does something brave, she gets a round of applause and her name is chanted. If she does something cute, it gets repeated and remembered by people who think she’s the best thing in the world. She knows no other life than having an entire community in her home that wants what’s best for her and will be available when she needs them. Every baby should be this loved.

I know this is true because I was the fourth of five kids. My mom (who is my parenting hero) was not always accessible to me. There was a younger sibling and she worked a job from home and there was a lot of laundry and older siblings needed her wisdom and also dinner had to get made. So I got to be loved by my big sister. It’s a gift I’m so thankful for to this day as she continues to be my friend and confidant. Having a parent that wasn’t always accessible meant I got to have a close relationship with a sibling and statistically speaking, that relationship will outlive the one I could have with my mom, even under the best circumstances. Sibling relationships matter. Knowing my big sister (who was beautiful and smart and kind) thought I was precious gave me a confidence to be brave and bold. I moved in the world as someone worth loving because I had a whole team of siblings at home that loved me. Very little outside of my home could undo the value that had been instilled in me by having a large family that loved me.

*(My sister and me- I learned from the best)*

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August 16, 2022
by Maralee
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To Octavia, On Your Adoption Day

Dear Tavia,

The day we’ve waited for is here and I can’t wait to get you all dressed up in your yellow lace dress and take you to court so we can make it official. I spent hours and hours looking for just the right dress– fixating on a detail I could control as we navigated delays in the process that we couldn’t control. You have felt settled in our family since we brought you home from the hospital, but today is the day we get to stop holding our breath and can just rest in the beauty of you as a much-cherished daughter.

I remember the day you were born. Just hours after you entered the world, we got a phone call asking if we were open to taking placement of a sibling of our girls’. I was totally caught off-guard, right in the middle of helping with homework and trying to figure out outfits for school picture day the following day. I yelled in surprise. I asked for details. The caseworker had none. Not a gender or name or birth weight or any health information. But I said yes. Because you were family to us. The sister of my daughter is part of my family.

I can so vividly remember taking Joel and Teddy to get haircuts and obsessively staring at my phone, waiting for more information. Waiting to hear we had permission to come visit you. I saw a message come through and just as I read “It’s a girl”, my phone died. I couldn’t see the rest of the details and had an agonizing wait until it was charged enough for me to see that you were healthy and we could come visit you. I called Grandma and texted my best friends and let our families know to be praying. A new person to love had entered the world.

I knew I would fight for your needs to be met, but I didn’t know it would start that first day. The security guard at the hospital didn’t want to let me go see you. He said a baby didn’t need visitors. He said you wouldn’t recognize me and couldn’t I just come back when it was time for you to be discharged? I wouldn’t leave. I knew I had to see you that day. The gift of seeing you on the day you were born was something I wasn’t going to give up. So phone calls were made. Conversations were had and eventually he let me go up and meet you because I convinced him that it was important to your sense of safety that you become familiar with me before I took you home. I talked to him about scent and for some reason that’s what connected the dots for him. I got to go up and meet you because a security guard realized you might need to smell me so you’d recognize my scent when it was time to go home.

When I saw you I instinctively said something I have said just two times before. I looked at you and without thinking said, “I know you!” I knew you because you looked like your big sisters and like your birth mom. I told your big brother Josh, “I know you!” when he was placed in my arms because I recognized him from the photos we’d been receiving for the months prior to his adoption. And when your brother Joel was pulled from my body and placed in my arms I said, “I know you!” because for the first time I was being handed a familiar face. I never planned those words, but in a long and beautiful line of knowing, I felt that in my soul I knew you the day I met you.

You were tiny and quiet and strong. You had a head full of hair and giant eyes. You stole my heart.

I video chatted with the kids so they could all see you and the whole family was smitten. I drove home late at night and barely slept. I was excited. . . and I was scared.

Eight is a lot of kids. I have cared for eight kids before while we were at the group home, but that was with support staff and all the kids were potty-trained and sleeping through the night. Even then, I felt stretched caring for eight kids. Could I do this? Was it fair to everybody? I remember seeing myself as a pie chart that just couldn’t keep getting subdivided without leaving someone without a slice. I was worried there wouldn’t be enough mom to go around.

But all of these worries were about a hypothetical reality where our family all depends on me doing everything. And it was a hypothetical reality where you were reduced to the logistics of your care. The true reality was something different entirely.

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June 9, 2022
by Maralee
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My Son and The Baby Sister He Didn’t Want (a love story)

For many years I have been telling nervous potential foster parents that if God is asking you to become a foster family, he is also asking your kids. I have encouraged parents to talk to their children, include them in the decision making process and do some education with them. I have said that if your kids are not onboard with the decision to add a foster child to your family, then you probably shouldn’t do it.

And then I ignored all my own advice.

We got the call in September about a baby girl. A baby sister. She was biologically related to two of our daughters and she needed a home. As I had done so many times, I asked each of the kids how they felt about us adding another child to our family. We talked about the potential that she’d only be with us temporarily. We talked about home visits and caseworker intrusions and court dates. We reminded them how a new baby changes all of our lives. Some kids were excited and enthusiastic. Some were nervous and tentative. All of them said we should do it.

Except one. He was a hard no.

To be fair, he is often a contrarian. If I ask him how his day at school was, he will say, “Horrible.” And when I ask him to elaborate, he actually had a great day. Dinner is gross until he asks for seconds. He doesn’t want to run errands with me and then puts his shoes on and gets in the car when I’m not looking. He hates that song and then listens to it on repeat. I don’t know how to explain this particular personality quirk, but it can be tough to know where his heart is actually at when you ask a direct question. So it didn’t seem quite right to let him be the deciding vote on such an important situation.

I went to meet Baby Sister in the hospital and FaceTimed the kids. He didn’t want to see her. I brought back pictures and answered everybody’s questions. He didn’t want to talk about it. I kept trying to dig it out of him. What was the concern? Was he worried I wouldn’t have enough time for him? Did he not like babies? Was he concerned about my ability to handle so many kids? When it was finally time to bring her home, he told me what he was worried about. “What if she has to leave us?” It’s such a right question to ask. It’s a fear we all shared.

We talked it through together. We talked about how it would be hard for us, but it would be so good for her to be in a family where she was that loved. We talked about how court cases typically progress and that we would likely know what direction things were heading– that she wouldn’t leave us all of a sudden. We talked about how he could always talk through his feelings with us and we would support him. I asked him if he wanted her to come live with us. He still said no.

I let him know she was coming home and we’d continue the conversation. And now 8 months have gone by.

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June 7, 2022
by Maralee
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When It’s Time to Leave a Church You Love

We have been attending the same church for over a decade. We have loved it there. I’ve written about our church family so many times over the years. They have held us up during very difficult moments and been a constant when many other things were changing. I thought we would be at that church until we died and then they’d have to bury us out behind the preschool classroom portable. But that is not how the story ends.

I wanted to write this out because I think if you had asked me about good reasons to leave a church, I wouldn’t have expressed anything close to the situation we have found ourselves in. I might have said that there would need to be major theological differences. I might have talked about abuse or financial mismanagement or other unethical behavior. We’ve stayed at our church through lots of hard situations and felt like our call was to be faithful, so shouldn’t everybody stay forever?

I’m seeing it a little differently now.

I want to be so careful how I talk about this because we LOVE the people at our old church (I hate even saying “old” church. ugh.). They are still our people and we left on good terms. I do not want to be hurtful in any way, while also acknowledging that sometimes it isn’t some major issue that means you need to leave. Sometimes you’re just in a different season.

As my husband and I were talking this all through for the millionth time I said to him, “I would never have thought that we’d make a church decision based on our kids.” Clearly, I like to imagine we only make noble decisions based on principle, not practical concerns. He paused and then said, “We’ve always made church decisions based on our kids.” He was right. We picked a church in Tennessee because they were welcoming to the boys we were working with in the group home we were part of. We ended up at our previous church because they had a heart for foster care and we were just beginning that journey. They were so excited to see us show up and helped give us opportunities to use our heart for infertility ministry and foster care support. While that’s still who we are, that’s not who the church is any longer. Our kids are in a different stage. We need different avenues to be able to serve and our kids need more ways to be involved.

We have chosen for our kids to be in public school, so we feel strongly that they need places to connect with other kids who share our values. We weren’t church shopping to try and find the place with the flashiest youth programing. We were looking for a home where our kids (especially our middle/high schoolers) felt needed and could contribute their gifts. We wanted a place they felt connected to other kids and valued by adults. While we loved the families at our previous church, there were barriers to our kids involvement. There came a moment when we looked at our kids and thought, “Why would they want to keep doing this after we stop making them?” We don’t want our kids to graduate from church when they graduate from high school. Our decision making process shouldn’t be about who has the most fun activities for kids, but about where our kids can learn, grow, and feel connected.

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June 1, 2022
by Maralee
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We Are Living in Adoption Purgatory

A letter arrived in the mail today. It was unexpected. It had a return address I’ve seen many times before and when it’s expected, it just feels like a piece of information for me to take in. A court date. A form to fill out. A report from a previous court hearing.

Today it was different.

When you aren’t expecting a letter from court, it feels like a threat. No news is good news and this feels especially true during some moments of the foster care journey. So my heart sank. My fingers shook. My mind raced with potential scenarios during the brief moment from the time I saw that return address and the moment I understood what this letter was for.

Our upcoming court date was changing. It was being pushed back by a few days. There was nothing to be worried about.

But we are in this weird land of adoption purgatory. Not quite the heaven of permanency. Not quite the hell of a long and complicated foster care case. It’s a place of waiting and worrying and just never feeling quite settled.

Everyone on our foster daughter’s team expects her case to go to permanency with us. It’s just a matter of paperwork. There are documents for us to sign. Documentation that needs to be collected. A homestudy needs to be completed and a court date needs to be requested. We are right in the middle of that process and while her team may feel certain of her permanency in our family, we know in foster care nothing is permanent until the judge says so.

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May 5, 2022
by Maralee
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Signs Your Potty-Training Toddler Needs to Poop

The most important part of potty-training is learning how to read your child’s cues. There are some very simple and straightforward indicators that your child needs to poop(/has already pooped). All you need to do is be alert for these telltale signs:

-Toddler is avoiding eye contact.

-Toddler is looking directly at you, talking to you, but also grunting.

-Toddler is quietly playing in the other room.

-Toddler is nervously running through the house.

-You are in the shower.

-Toddler is hiding behind the couch.

-Toddler is doing a puzzle.

-You are not at home and forgot to bring a change of clothes.

-Toddler is yelling, “POTTY!”

-Toddler is yelling, “NO POTTY!”

-You are in a public place without easy bathroom access.

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April 27, 2022
by Maralee
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“If applicable, resolution of infertility issues”

The question caught me off-guard, although I’m not sure why. We’ve done a lot of adoption homestudies over the years. We’ve had to answer deeply personal and invasive questions. The topic of our infertility diagnosis has been addressed and readdressed multiple times. And here I am again. In my forties. With eight children. Explaining the “resolution of our infertility issues.”

Sometimes I wish my brain worked like my husband’s brain does. I glanced at his answer and he simply said, “We don’t have infertility issues.” He’s not wrong. We’ve been pregnant four times. We have two healthy biological children. We are not trying to get pregnant and struggling with the emotions of not being successful. But somehow that infertility label we acquired almost twenty years ago still packs an emotional punch.

The question makes me feel defensive. Have we resolved those issues? What does “resolved” even mean? Is it possible to forget the decade of grief? The invasive tests? The expensive treatments? The pained expression on the woman’s face who is about to give you some bad news from your ultrasound? The insensitive comments from strangers? The well-meaning questions from friends? The baby showers you left in tears and the Mother’s Day church services you left in anger? The decision to no longer pursue treatments and just live with the broken bodies that have failed you time and time again?

Is this all resolved?

Infertility doesn’t feel like something you go through. It feels like something you become. It fundamentally changes your relationship to your spouse, your friends, the medical community, with God, and even (and most especially and intimately) with your own body. Adoption doesn’t fix that. Pregnancy doesn’t even fix that. You will forever be impacted by that reality.

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April 14, 2022
by Maralee
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Ignoring Your Adopted Child’s Questions Doesn’t Preserve Their Innocence

I read this summary of a podcast interview with Thomas Rhett about the adoption of his daughter and I’m not okay with it. I don’t want to pretend that this interview was a full description of how he’s handling adoption conversations in his home. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I also want to present an alternative narrative about how to handle these adoption conversations to anyone who is looking to Rhett as an example.

From the article:

“She asks questions all the time,” Thomas, 32, told the Today co-anchor. “She talks to Lauren, like, ‘When can we go see my friends in Uganda?'”

While Willa Gray’s curiosity may be growing, Thomas admitted he’s not ready to have a deep conservation with her about adoption just yet.

“You go, ‘Well, what age is the right age?’ The world is moving so fast that it’s like, to have a conversation with a 6-year-old like that,” he said. “Maybe I’m old-school that way but I’m like, ‘Maybe we need to wait ’til she’s 10.”

I would like to propose that we do not have to sidestep the truth of our child’s adoption story. In fact, it may be more damaging the longer you wait to have those conversations.

It’s a really nice idea that if we don’t talk about it, we can preserve our child’s “innocence”. That somehow if we don’t acknowledge the trauma that happened to them, it can’t impact them. But that is ridiculous. The trauma already happened. Rhett’s daughter (like my son) was adopted from Africa. Her adoption is an obvious fact to anyone who sees their family. She knows she’s adopted. She has questions. She remembers her life before her current reality. You are not preserving her innocence not to answer the questions she’s asking. You’re preserving her ignorance. And she will likely resent you for it. Addressing the trauma our kids already experienced and already feel is the first step to helping them heal.

Adopted kids deserve the truth. They deserve it from the moment they enter your life. You whisper it over their cribs. You talk about it between kisses and bedtime stories. You speak of their first mom as you comb their hair. You answer every question as it comes up. You set the tone for those conversations before they ever need to happen by being honest, approachable and open.

So why do some parents think the right course of action is to kick that can down the road? I don’t think it’s about preserving a child’s innocence. I think it’s about our own discomfort and our own insecurities.

If I tell them the truth, will they not see me as their “real” parent? Will I have to watch them grieve? Will I have to talk about the ethics of adoption, or sex outside of marriage, or death, or poverty, or substance abuse, or any number of topics that I don’t like thinking about?

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March 29, 2022
by Maralee
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Some Thoughts on Our (Maybe/Hopefully/Probably) Last Homestudy

I should definitely be cleaning right now. In less than two hours a woman will be coming to judge my home (very literally) and I’m sure I should go take the clean laundry out of the dryer and get it put away in case she needed to look in the dryer for some reason. But instead I wanted to take a minute to document what it feels like during those moments before a homestudy.

It’s stressful. Super stressful.

We have done countless homestudies over the last 16 years when we first started the international adoption process. I actually don’t know how many we’ve participated in, but I think conservatively it’s been about a dozen. The impending adoption of our littlest foster daughter means we’re getting ready to do what should be our last homestudy and it’s a closing of a chapter I gladly welcome. An international adoption, plus 13 years as foster parents means we have been examined in every way possible. We’ve joked that by this point we should be able to show up at the police department and just show them our hands and they should be able to identify our fingerprints on sight. But they don’t. So every two years we make the trek to get fingerprinted again and again. When we started this process they used actual ink and now it’s just digital. We’ve been homestudied enough times that we can watch how tech is changing the process. We are old and this is getting old.

(Chalk art by my kids to welcome the homestudy lady. I promise I did not put them up to that.)

As a mother, can I tell you what my biggest fear would be? Someone coming to my house with license to poke around however they want. They have to document whatever they find and point out any areas where I’m failing. Then they’d talk to my kids to ask them what they think of my parenting, our family, my marriage, our extended family and our community, etc. Whatever my kids say (WHATEVER THEY SAY) would get documented and go into an official record that would get disturbed to OUR STATE GOVERNMENT and then handed to a judge who can decide if we are fit enough parents to be able to keep the child in our home that has only ever known us as her parents.

This is the waking nightmare that is the adoption homestudy process.

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March 18, 2022
by Maralee
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I Missed His First Track Meet

My beautiful boy is running in his first track meet today. I dropped him off and watched him walk across a high school parking lot to his waiting team. I gave him a hug before he got out of the car and told him how proud I was of him because I am so proud. So very proud of this person who is becoming less my little boy and more a of young man every day.

And as I watched him walk away, I cried.

I won’t be at his meet today. I wish I could be, but it just doesn’t work this time. There are kids home for Spring Break. There’s a toddler who needs a nap. There’s a baby who will need to be fed. Sometimes we can find a way to get to these events that always seem to be at the most inconvenient times, but today it just isn’t happening.

This definitely isn’t the first time I’ve missed big moments in his life. There have been basketball games and soccer and a Rubik’s Cube competition and cross country meets and a skateboarding competition and I don’t even know what else. I remember the first time I had to miss a soccer game when he was still too little to tie his own shoes and I felt like I had to turn in my “Good Mom” card because isn’t being at ALL your child’s games the definition of a Good Mom?

That’s just not the reality for our family. And I can’t tell you how thankful I am that my son doesn’t hold it against me. I’m so proud of how he’s learned to be an advocate for what he needs. He will make sure I know what events are nonnegotiable and he’ll help me problem-solve how I can be there. He’s also gracious when I can’t make it. He knows in a big family, sometimes other people’s needs come first. I hate that he may not always feel like the most important person in the universe, but I also think part of the reason he’s a pretty great kid is because he knows he’s not the most important person in the universe.

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