Cyber Monday SALE

Purchase two or more items from our new shop and receive a FREE single strand necklace! 

(while supplies last) 

And FREE shipping on all orders over $50. 

Use coupon code "cybermonday" for free shipping.

Happy shopping!

New Shop, New Goods and FREE SHIPPING

In honor of our new shop on Big Cartel (where we can list ALL of our adoption goodies in one place) and Small Business Saturday I'm offering FREE SHIPPING from midnight tonight until midnight tomorrow!

Here's a sneak peek at just a few of the items. There are over 40 in the shop including some beautiful new necklaces, earrings and sling bags from Uganda - head over and check 'em out!

Oh, and sharing our shop with your friends and family is always appreciated:-)

Thanks for your support!

31 Families of HOPE

Check out who's featured as today's family!

both/and NOT either/or

My post from Friday initiated some really wonderful conversation in the comments and on Facebook. One of my favorites was "We call that having a both/and approach to kids instead of an either/or approach. There are kids here and there and they all are in need of healing!"

With that in mind I wanted to share some practical ideas for a "both/and" approach to orphan care. Not everyone is called to foster or adopt but there IS something for everyone! I hope you find something on this list for you!

Helping Kids Here...

Make dinner for a foster family. (If you don't know any I will give you our address:-)

Donate clothes and other items for kids going into foster care.

Become a Life Coach for a teenager in foster care.

Become a host family for the Safe Families for Children program.

Become a foster family.

Become certified to provide respite care for a foster family.

Become a CASA worker. 

Share this post.

Helping Kids There...

Participate in Samaritans Purse or a container project.

Follow blogs or websites highlighting waiting children and pray them home.

Donate your birthday - give money or items to your favorite orphan care ministry. (local or abroad)

Support an adopting family by buying their fund raising "stuff".

Sponsor a child.

Sponsor a mom.

Sponsor a teacher.

I Was Wrong

Our foster care social worker makes a visit to our house once a month to see how we are doing as a foster home. She is assigned to look after us; the boys and their mother have another worker assigned to look after them and work towards the goal of reunification.

Our worker, we’ll call her “Susan”, was here last week and we were talking about how understaffed the department is. SO understaffed, she almost called us about a baby. A baby with a “concurrent” goal. (For those of you not in the foster care world, the term “concurrent” means they are working towards adoption for this baby.) Did I mention we're talking about a BABY?

Susan knows we are not in the place to adopt a baby. Susan knows we have our "hands full". Susan knows we have a little boy in the Congo coming home soon-ish. But she had no one else to call. “All of our homes are full.” she told me. “We don’t have enough homes – even for babies.”

Do those words stop you in your tracks? Not enough homes? For babies? In Kentucky?

Say What!?!

William and I never intended to become foster parents. We never even considered adopting domestically. The thought literally never crossed our minds.

Do you ever speak words that come back to haunt you? I did once. Ok, a few times, but at least once on this very topic.

The day before "T" and "M" came to live with us I attended Created for Care, a retreat/conference for adoptive moms. I was speaking with a woman whose family had been praying about starting the journey of adopting from Ethiopia. She asked me a question I could tell had been on her mind for some time. She asked me how I answer people who want to know why we are adopting from Africa and not “here”. Here being in the US.

I gave my wise Christian answer (insert sarcasm here) - we prayed about it and feel like God has our children in Africa... and then I told her the need is greater there. Kids in the US have roofs over their heads, clothes on their backs and food in their tummies. Their parents are not dying of AIDS at alarming rates and they are not dying themselves of dirty water. Simple. The need is greater. I. Spoke. Those. Words.

Friends, I was wrong. Hear me. I. WAS. WRONG.

While yes, children in Africa (or Russia or India or Haiti) are more likely to be on the streets in the only shirt they own begging for food and living in a cardboard box because their parents are dead or sick, the effect parentlessness has on them is NO GREATER than the effect of parentlessness on vulnerable children right “here”.

Dr. Purvis says “their brains are different”. Kids from "hard places" - their brains are different. The reason their brains are different is because of the lack of nurturing they received prenatally and during the first few years of their lives.

Their brains are different because no one nurtured them. 

No one met their needs. 

No one loved them.

There are six risk factors that put a child into this category: difficult pregnancy, difficult birth, early hospitalization, abuse, neglect and trauma. (Certainly malnutrition plays a critical role and can have dramatic affects on development but a child who was hungry and nurtured will be better off than a child who had a full belly but no nurture.)

When T and M came to live with us I was SHOCKED to see the exact same behaviors we had read about and come to expect from our little one coming to us from an orphanage in a third world country. In my naive mind they would be "normal". They had a roof, clothes and food. (most of the time) They even had a parent. I thought they would be a little shaken up but fair pretty well.

I was wrong.

Their brains are different BUT their needs are the same. The same as children in Africa. Children in Russia, India and Haiti. The need for lovers of Jesus to fight for them is the same.

When we went through foster care training over the summer our instructor shared statistics that were startling to me at the time. I just didn't know:

246 kids in foster care ages 0 - 5

118 kids in care ages 6 - 11

344 kids in care ages 12 - 18

50 kids in care ages 19 - 21 (this number may be the saddest as these kids are holding out to the very last minute for a family to call their own)

Nearly 800 kids are in foster homes in Jefferson County.  800 kids. Ironically, in the state of Kentucky there are 800 KIDS READY TO BE ADOPTED. Did you know that? Six months ago, I did not.

There are a lot of myths regarding foster care and adopting from the foster system. Unfortunately, the only stories that receive media attention are ones where a birth parent shows up years later and demands their kid back. Or stories of kids who linger in the states care for years and years. While these things do happen, they are not the norm in Kentucky. More importantly, the system may be broken, but God is sovereign. 

No one reading these words is immune from receiving a phone call today that will change their life. Your life. My life. We are not in control. Of anything. Biological kids, internationally adopted kids, foster kids.They all belong to Him.

Did you know...

Did you know adopting from foster care is essentially free? FREE.

Did you know biological parents have no way of gaining back custody of their children once parental rights are terminated? NO. WAY.

Did you know children enter foster care through no fault of their own? They are victims of the adults who were supposed to take care of them.

Did you know in the state of Kentucky the Safe Families for Children Act prevents kids from lingering in the system?

Did you know you are provided a per diem to care for the foster kids in your home? Did you know this per diem continues for most children even after they have been adopted? Did you know kids from foster care can go to any state college for free?

Did you know you can take your foster kids across state lines, enroll them in daycare and have babysitters?

Did you know you will get attached? 

And it will be hard?

It will. 

In the paraphrased words of Amy Monroe "You can handle getting attached and getting hurt. You're an adult. You can handle it. They are kids."

These kids you are afraid of loving too much - they are dying for someone to love them like that. While they are not dying from poverty, disease or hunger, their needs are the same.

If you'd like to learn more about adopting from foster care in KY visit the KY Department for Family Services. If you are interested in foster care or adoption in another state visit Focus on the Family.

My prayer is that this post would shine a light on the needs of children right "here". Please contact me if you have questions about our experience or if I can help you prayerfully begin the journey of foster care. lindsy.wallace AT gmail DOT com

Adoption Blogger Interview Project: Part Two

If you missed yesterdays post scroll on down and check it out first. You don't want to miss what Tara Bradford of Smore Stories shared as part of the Adoption Blogger Interview Project. The second half of her interview is powerful and I am so thankful for her unique perspective. I know you will be too! 

               As an adoptee, is there a common theme you see among adoptive parents that makes you shake your head and wish you could speak into?

I think as an adoptee one of the most important things that I would stress to adoptive parents is to keep your child’s past a part of their story. I personally grew up not knowing anything about my heritage and culture. I don’t think it was intentional on my mom’s part, but she simply didn’t realize the importance of it to my wholeness as an adoptee.

Particularly with transracial adoptions, it’s vital to talk with your child about where they came from and help them be proud of the fact that they are not one, but two cultures. I am Korean and I am American, yet, I think many times parents don’t realize that as adoptees, we think we have to be one or the other. This becomes a serious identity issue because we are then stuck in a space where we don’t feel as if we belong to either culture. Many cultures may shun adoptees when we return because we grew up in America, yet as we grow up in America we don’t feel as though we fit in here either.

Please don’t fear your child’s history. Please don’t think that if we don’t talk about it, then it will go away and all will be fine. It simply won’t. The more adoptive parents talk about, shed positive light on, and provide open dialogue with their adoptee about their birth country or culture, the more you will establish a sense of confidence in them about who they are and where they came from as well as a confidence in the fact that being adopted is a good thing, not something to feel ashamed about. I recently wrote a post entitled “When adoption, race and parenting collide” that speaks more specifically to this challenge transracial families face.

              Is there anything you wish you had done to better equip yourself prior to adopting your children from Ethiopia?

If I could go back and have the time again in the “paper pregnancy” stage of adoption, I would have done more to understand Trust Based Parenting, helping a child heal from their wounded past, and what my own damage is that I bring into the parent-child relationship.

I’ve recently done training through Empowered To Connect to learn how to teach parents the Trust Based Parenting (TBP)model and I have seen the fruits of this in my own home with our children and with myself as a parent. It’s a “relationally” based model that is based on how God parents us. Much of what we learn as parents comes from our own childhood and our parents model of parenting. In my early parenting years I learned mostly how to do “behavioral” based parenting. The TBP model has shown me how to empower my children by teaching them to use their voice (words) in a respectful way while staying in connection (relationship) with them as I teach them how to correct the desired behavior and then praise them as they show the correct behavior thereby leaving them with “motor-memory”. I would previously send my kids to time out expecting them to know how to behave differently when they were done. I realized how I had been unfairly expecting my children to know how to act. It’s really humbling as an adult when we think about how many times we know we need to repeat an action for it to become habit (research shows 66 times) in our own lives, yet, we expect our children, who don’t come with an innate moral blueprint, to know how to ask for a toy rather than grab it, or talk through conflict rather than get aggressive and hit because they are mad. This training and the book The Connected Child was instrumental in giving me the tools to parent and help our children heal from the situation they came from.

The other piece is what I bring to the parent-child relationship as the parent. I’ve been on a long journey, as I mentioned previously, to heal from my own abandonment and my training has helped me realize that I bring my own baggage into relationships. It’s helped me a lot to work with an attachment counselor for my kids and myself. It’s also helped me to read Parenting From The Inside Out by Daniel Siegel. It’s become very apparent, that if I don’t know the way to healing myself, then how do I expect to guide my kids to a place of their own healing?

               What advice would you give adoptive parents as we seek to mix our biological and adopted kids and unite them as siblings?

First, I would encourage parents to think about the simple things such as, how they “refer” to their kids within their presence and to friends, family, etc. There are many words we use in talking about adoption that can make our adopted kids feel like they really aren’t “ours”. If we talk about our birth and adopted kids differently within our respective families, then how will we foster an environment where they will feel like they are equal to or united with their siblings?

Second, we have the same rules and same expectations in our home for all of our kids. Our 3 main ones are “Be Respectful, No Hurts (verbally or physically) and Stick Together (we do things that help us stay together as family, rather than things that would pull us apart)”.

Third, I would encourage parents to establish a confidence in their kids that they are each uniquely created and that everyone has a unique purpose intended by God within our family and within our world. Without each person’s contribution, it changes the quality of our family and ultimately the quality of our world, as we become adults. When we work together as a family to protect each other, work together and be kind to each other, we are doing our part to help our family be a safe, positive, loving environment that allows us each to be our unique selves.

Fourth, talk with your birth children and prepare/coach them in understanding the possible trauma their siblings have come from. We took our sons with us to Ethiopia so they could experience first hand the culture and poverty that their siblings were coming from. We try our best to help our birth sons see that they are a piece of the healing journey for their siblings and that they play an important role in partnering with them.

Lastly, I would encourage parents to not celebrate “Gotcha Day” as something only celebrating your adopted children. As an adoptee, I struggle with this name and how it has traditionally been celebrated. As an adoptive parent I struggle with how this puts focus on our adopted children only and depending on how it’s celebrated, can have an exclusionary element to our birth children. Our family has “Family Celebration” day which is a celebration on September 11^th when we touched US soil with our children who recently joined our family. We had ethnic food and then took time to have each of our kids’ share how they feel loved in this family and what family has meant to them personally in the past year. My husband and I answer the same questions and we try to stress the celebration is our way of honoring our family in the new sense of how it exists. We take time to honor each of our children and their uniqueness and what that brings to our family as a whole.

               How do you feel about terms which have become mainstream in the Christian orphan care movement – “fatherless” “orphan” “vulnerable children” “needy” “poor”?

The terms themselves don’t bother me because if God spoke of them, we should also :-). What I would say is disappointing for me, is the lack of these actual voices in the movement itself.

As one who was once “fatherless” an “orphan” a “vulnerable child” who was “needy” and “poor” it saddens me that the larger orphan care movements are not harnessing and embracing the actual ones who lived this out in their personal lives. There are many amazing, godly people who have helped the orphan care movement in tremendous ways calling others to action. My concern is that those of us who are/were the “fatherless” “orphan”, etc. are not the ones being asked to help be the movement. It’s as if we are the “show” piece bringing the heart wrenching story or the “drama” in the conference rather than being utilized as a resource for the meat of the conference. Unfortunately, I have yet to see a conference who is utilizing us, “fatherless”, to the core of being the actual voice. If we truly want to speak for and defend the cause of orphans, shouldn’t we start by listening to the ones called “orphans”? Couldn’t we be utilizing the voice itself rather than trying to be the voice for them?

               What is the main thing you think adoptees want their parents to know?

An adoptee is in this position because adults along the way have made all the decisions for them. We are juggled from adult to adult through orphanages or the foster system and then finally ending in a forever family. That’s a lot of change, a lot of trauma in a small child’s life.

Adoptees have had no voice in their life trajectory and their circumstances are a result of adults who couldn’t/wouldn’t care for them and adults who ultimately chose to care for them.

We want to know that our feelings have been considered, our voices have been heard, our pain has been cradled, our grief has been treasured and our lives have been worth fighting for. We want parents who won’t abandon us again. We want to understand who we are and where we’ve come from and how we merge these two very diverse worlds together. We want to know that even though you didn’t give birth to us physically, in your heart we are a physical birth and no matter what happens you will be by our side to help us understand our identity and to help us reconcile our past, present and future. We want to know that you are our forever partner in this journey of adoption.

There is SO MUCH in these words and I want to say "THANK YOU!" to Tara for sharing her story and wisdom with us. I'm praying the last paragraph for us all, that we would be able to give those things to the children God has in our homes and the ones we are still waiting for.