Huge (non-cancer) News!

History

A long time ago, long before Noah's arrival or the births of our two older girls, and long before we were even married, Kim completed a semester abroad as part of her Social Work degree in Honduras. She studied third world development and managed to get a lot of practice with her Spanish. Whilst I pined and studied in colder, northern climbs, Kim toured plantations, learned about social justice organizations, and got to know a thin slice of Tegucigalpa life by becoming a part of a rowdy, late night loving, and expansive home-stay family.

It was during this period of her life that Kim began to find some clarity of purpose, and her heart settled on a vision for the future - one that would marry her deep convictions around justice with her beautifully generous heart.

In a place where the inequities and injustices that permeate all facets of our life in this world were laid just a bit more bare than in others, she decided that one tangible step she could take towards helping in the restoration work of this broken world would be to, some day, adopt a child.

And then the rest of life happened.

We were married and moved out West. Out West, we started a family of our own when, ten years ago, our first daughter was born. And we loved having children. Coming from a large family myself, it all felt very right to be parenting. And though parenting is anything but easy, being family was and we loved the idea of expanding ours.

Just over a year and a bit later, we were expecting once again and we were, once again, just as excited about growing our family as we had been about starting it. Both Kim and I really reveled in our roles as parents and we were really jazzed about the idea of someday hauling around a "brood" of kids in a mini-van. Waiting for our second daughter to be born, the thought of slowing down never really crossed our minds. We wanted family and we wanted lots of it.

However, this all put the adoption dream, one that I had - kinda, sorta -bought into, on hold. I mean, one does not easily squeeze an adoption into the rapid succession of births we were planning.

They say that if you want to hear God laugh, then tell him your plans. And though we didn't really laugh when our plans were changed, our eyes were certainly opened to how shockingly and mysteriously God's plans can differ from our own. After our second daughter was born, Kim became very sick and the direction of our lives changed irrevocably. Things were horrible, incredible, terrifying and beautiful...I could write an entirely separate blog about it.

But God's light was there. Things were all right.

The biggest consequence, though, was that we would no longer be able to have our own biological children. It was then that the dream came roaring back.

Back East again

And so, eight years ago, we set our sights, in earnest, on making this dream of adoption a reality.

The first step was to move ourselves back to Ontario. Because we knew that adopting would mean rooting ourselves, we also knew that it would be important to settle where we had always intended on ending up. We packed up our junk and hit the road.

Once back in Ontario, we completed the PRIDE training required by Children's Aid to become eligible for fostering and adopting. Our hope was to welcome a child who was younger than our two girls and we were thinking that, most likely, we would be matched with a little person who needed a home as a foster child first and then - depending on how things worked out - we would adopt that child if no other kin home was available.

We also managed to find a physical home that would be suitable for an additional child. Though you might be allowed to cram as many of your biological children into as small space as you like - I have some experience here as one of seven siblings - the Crown likes their wards to have their own private bedroom within a house that is not only full of love but also adequately equipped with smoke alarms, locked medicine cabinets and most modern safety features.

And, finally, after paper work, interviews, reference checks, financial checks and Lord knows what else, we were approved as foster/adoptive parents back in the Spring of 2018.

Fullness / Lack

But I don't want this to all sound like selfless and self-congratulatory "do-goodism". There was more going on during this time that should be explained.

Kim had a vision of a child, several years prior to Noah's arrival in our life, of a shaggy haired boy running into her arms for a hug. The specifics of the boy in the image don't precisely match Noah's description nor does Kim pretend to be clairvoyant. What was striking about the premonition, however, was the feeling attached to it. The feeling that there was more to come and that our family needed to grow.

The truth is, prior to Noah's arrival, we were beginning to feel very settled as a family. Our girls had gotten to the ages where we were in a real sweet-spot, one most new parents really envy. The girls were no longer in diapers and they were sleeping through the night. We could send them outside to play on their own and they (mostly) dealt with their own problems independently. Kim and I were beginning to have lives beyond our kids and we were feeling good about going out for the night and even *gasp* leaving the kids with a family member or friend so that we could get away for an entire weekend.

Life was getting pretty cushy. And it all felt incomplete.

Rather than just feeling as if we could help out by taking in and adopting a child, we felt as if our family and our family life was missing out on something. The future without adopting was pretty straightforward and simple but it also looked really sad and empty.

I think this was the Holy Spirit moving in us because, as easy and clean as it would have been to just go on with the family we had been given, and as scary as it was to think about rocking the very steady boat we were all sitting in, the thought of doing nothing and making no changes was more frightening.

So we trusted that God would let us know when it was time to tip the boat over.

The huge news bit

As I've written about previously, Noah came to us in July of 2019. He was a few months shy of his second birthday at the time and his arrival was both exciting and terrifying. He was not completely unknown to Kim who had "crossed paths" with Noah and his foster family when he was just a wee one but we were completely unknown to him and the placement of a child into an adoptive home is a strange process.

After just a few short weeks of visits, Noah came to live with us. Though we were just a familiar family he had been getting to know up until that point, we became his whole world once the move in occurred. And I will not paint rosy and sun shiny pictures of how perfect life became when Noah finally landed in our home because that would be total bullshit. Everything changed and it was not a quick re-adjustment.

One big difference between bringing a baby home from the hospital and welcoming a nearly two-year-old child into your family is that, as a parent, you are not entitled to any special favour by your adopted child. I was "daddy" in name alone and had to prove that I was worth my salt. The same was true for all members of the family but, over time, things changed. Relationships were formed and bonds were built and trust slowly grew. The earliest defined relationships were between Noah and the cats, but things began to coalesce and grow between Noah and Kim, Noah and the girls and, eventually, Noah and I.

I am proud now that I have (mostly) been approved and accepted by Noah and have earned the right to be his father because this really is the big thing with adopting - I became his parent in name long before I became his parent in lived reality. And though I think I love him as much as anyone could ever love a child, I always find new depths to that love. This present trial has proven this over and over again.

Noah has changed but he hasn't just become another member of the family. We are a different family now and this is because Noah has changed the very fabric of what this family once was. We are an entirely different family now that he is a part of it. We are this family because Noah is in it. Praise God.

And today, at 3:00 we finally - FINALLY - were able to receive the court papers that officially make Noah a legal part of this family. After twenty months of Covid delays and with the help of a big push from Noah's social worker, we finally have the documents in our hands.

This is the BIG NEWS. This final piece of a long adoption process solidifies, in the eye of the law, something that has been true for quite some time already. Though it doesn't change our feelings about Noah it does change some things about our lived reality, the most important aspect being that we will no longer need the approval of social workers before Noah goes through certain procedures. Kim and I can now, legally, make these decisions for our son.

What we are most grateful about, however, is that this makes our home Noah's forever home and our family Noah's forever family. Because, the way he rules the roost, we really are Noah's family and it is his light, his delight and his joy that are binding us closer and closer together.

So now we look towards our future as a family as Noah continues to battle his cancer.

As well, the story of Noah's life, of course, has and continues to be full of brokenness. For every joy-filled adoption story there has to first come another story that is pain and loss filled. This is true for our little guy as much as it is for any adopted child.

There is darkness.

Today, however, a light gets to shine into that darkness. And that light is shining brightly on our dear little boy who is also God's precious child.