Ignorance is the REAL disability

Someone that I love very much - who is very near and dear to me - told me today...

"You'd better not adopt any more kids with brain injuries."

You see, Nandini is missing almost a fourth of her brain. The actual term is porencephaly. It's a brain cyst. But basically, her front parietal and temporal lobes are gone. The cyst is just formed around the empty space.

And she's okay. She's funny and smart. Sharp as a tack. Way clever. Very manipulative. The girl's got street smarts likes I've never seen. She's very quick to catch on to things. She's super, actually.

But you can't have a quarter of your brain missing without there being some sort of risidual effect. It just doesn't happen.

So we're starting to see some of these things. And, honestly, it's really hard because we're dealing with a child who spent three years in an orphanage. Who has a brain injury. Who is amazingly strong-willed and has a strong sense of survival - and who is now trying to learn to live in a family setting with all these new sights and smells and words and faces. You know, how much is it from the orphanage? How much is the brain injury? How much is it just her to trying to adjust to everything?

But, deep down, we get a sense that things aren't going to be as smooth as we originally thought. Learning is going to be a huge challenge for her. She's super smart, but she will have a hard time sitting down and learning. Memory is a big challenge for her. Speech is a big challenge. But, hey. We're up for the challenge. This is what God led us to do. But it doesn't always make it easy.

So, anyway, this same person who I love and adore told me...

"Well, you're the ones who chose her."

Uh, no. We weren't out seeking to adopt again. This was DIVINE INTERVENTION. God led us to Nandini. And he made an awesome choice. Fantastic choice. She is amazing. But, uh yeah. It is hard. Just because God tells you to do something doesn't mean that it's going to be easy.

And what the heck does that mean anyway? "You chose her?" Like, what? We'd give her back because she's most likely gonna suck at math and the teenage years are going to be hard? Um, hello. She sounds like the spitting image of me.

It just frustrates me. We love our kids. So what if it's hard. Isn't life hard anyway?? I mean, our kids could be perfectly healthy and it'd still be hard. At least I don't ever have to worry about Noah going off and knocking up some high schooler. I don't have to worry about him drinking and smoking pot. Life is hard no matter what. That's why it's life. It doesn't matter if you're children are perfectly healthy or have special needs. Life.Is.Hard. Period.

People look at us and think that we asked for it. I've literally had people tell me that.

"Well, that's what you get for adopting special needs kids."

What? So I can't have a bad day? Everyone else can lament and complain, but Leslie has no right to because she "asked for it." She knew what she was getting into.

Okay, it's fairly obvious that I'm going on a tangent here. And while I'm on a tangent, let me just say that it ticks me off when people tell me that we don't need to adopt anymore. I mean, I'll be the first one to say that our hands are full. Like, hugely, overflowingly full. But I have no idea what God has in store for our family. And if He calls us to adopt again, how dare we say no to Him.

Anyway, I have no idea what I'm exactly trying to say in this post. And I have to go. I never should've started blogging in a timecrunch anyway. It just frustrates me that we can't go to people we love and trust and say, "Hey, I'm having a bad day. This is really hard" without them throwing it back in our face that "we chose this life", "that's what you get with special needs kids" or "well, don't adopt anymore like them."

Ignorance is the real disability.