There’s this girl I met over the summer.  She casually joined my group workouts and I immediately noticed her beaming smile.  At the end of her first workout, she tells me she has lost a RIDICULOUS amount of weight (115 pounds!) and that she has a TRIBE of children.  My jaw drops because I see this tiny woman who looks maybe 23.  I can’t even properly introduce her.  Just read this.  –Debbie

Hi.  I am Jena.  I love Jesus.  I am married to a man who makes my toes curl.  Still.  After 20+ years of marriage.  His name is Keith and he is all mine.  I am mom to seven children.  Yes, they are all mine.  The ones I pushed out and the ones I pulled home.

Keith found out our first child was coming in such a creative way.  I told him we were having a special theme dinner and told him he had to figure out the theme.  I made baby back ribs, baby corn, baby this, baby that.  Keith was clueless.  He finally got that all the food was baby size, but didn’t make the connection there was a baby on the way.  I got blunt.  It was a beautiful moment.
He learned about the third pregnancy by walking in the house and asking me why I was crying.  I threw the freshly peed-on pregnancy stick at him and it hit him in the head.  No guessing with that announcement.  My tears were from complete shock as in my lap was a nursing infant.

`By the fourth I was kind of out of creativity, and there was no Pinterest way back then.  I mean, how do you beat a wet stick upside the head?  So I called his work and his co-worker answered.  I said hi and asked if he could please give Keith a message that I was pregnant again. The co-worker replied, “You’re pregnant again?!?!” and I heard Keith in the background say, “Is that my wife?”  Yep.  It’s me darlin’.

Our fifth and sixth kiddos announced their arrival over email.  A little tiny poor quality picture and three sentences including their names, ages and a blurb about their current situation.

Little seven didn’t really have an announcement.  We got a call Wednesday evening and I met him at a grocery store parking lot the next morning.  The social worker told us this would be transitional respite care, meaning he would be with us until an adoptive family could be identified.  The older kids met him in the various carpool lines.  Hubs met him after he got home from work.  Not much fanfare, eh? Keith, who has always ‘arrived’ to life changing decisions before me was ready to be that permanent family from the start.  Me? Not so much.  I had an immediate connection with this little one that was unlike anything I had ever experienced.  I willed myself not to fall in love.  When questioned why I refused to commit I had to admit two things:

1. Pride. I was the young mom!  When I tried to register my oldest for kindergarten they thought I was the babysitter! I had high school children, not preschool children!  Those young hip moms would ask if I was the Granny at kindergarten open house.  And another thing, I could squeeze six kids in the back of a Honda Odyssey.  Seven would mean what, a sprinter van? A church bus? No way.

2. Fear.  I was in the middle of a weight loss journey and I knew that with a new child came stress (as in “My name is Jena, and I am a stress eater.”), a loss of the sliver of me-time (in which I preferred to huddle up with some Cherry Garcia in front of the TV), sleepless nights (which equaled midnight snacks) and a new realm of organized chaos (which always meant dinner in the drive thru).

I was way too old and set in my ways to add another kiddo to our already full pack.  Until that day.  That day when little seven was playing at my feet and he asked if he could stay… I assumed he meant stay and play in the living room since he asked permission to do anything.  I told him he could play here, or outside, to just let me know and we would play wherever he wanted.  He climbed up nose to nose with me, grabbed my ears and said, “No. Can I stay and be your family?” So my husband learned about the seventh via text message.  My message simply said ‘we have seven kids’.  His reply was simply, ‘took ya long enough to figure it out’.

I realize many, many stories about the amazing gift of adoption float throughout cyberspace everyday.  And I don’t want to seem negative, but I want to be real.  This adoption stuff is hard.  No running some quick sprints and then moving on to the next thing on the to do list because your workout is complete.  It’s a never ending marathon.  You will never arrive at the end of the workout.  Just when you think you can make it to the finish line, the finish line moves.  We believe fully in not airing our kids pasts, the hard places they have come from or putting their stories out there for all to see.  We don’t want them to have to live in a community knowing everyone knows intimate details of their lives.  A good rule of thumb is not talking about anything on social media that could possibly be talked about in therapy.  Oh yes, therapy.  Adoptive parents, don’t resist this gift!!

As much as I want to share the ins and outs of truly living with children from hard places, difficult pasts filled with loss, their stories are not mine to share.  So perhaps we could play a game of ‘maybe’. As in ‘maybe’ this is what life is like in my shoes.

Maybe a child would eat like a chipmunk gathering food for the winter and need the heimlich maneuver every single time they eat.

Maybe a child would lay on the living room floor spinning in circles for hours.  Everyday.  For weeks.

Maybe a child would not be able to even begin to attach to two people, meaning mom has to meet every need for 6-8 months. Not mom and dad.  No older siblings helping.  No grandparents taking a shift.  No aunties coming for rescue.  Like they were an infant, but it was time to fill out kindergarten registration forms.  Think spoon feeding in mama’s lap.  Think their bedroom is your bedroom.  Think being within 5 feet of the child every waking second.

Maybe you would need a pediatric neurologist, like yesterday, and you may have been told the first available appointment was in 6 months.  So maybe you asked if there was a cancellation list the child could be added to.  Let’s say you were told there was no cancel list, but you could call to see if there was an opening due to cancelation. Maybe you ended the conversation and called the office right back asking if there had been a cancellation. Maybe you called and asked the same at least three times a day.  And perhaps they may have gotten sick of you calling and given your child an appointment the same week.  Ya know, maybe.

Maybe you have to pull a kiddo out of school because of racism.  The teacher may have said it was just kids being kids.  The principal may have said his school was a no bullying zone, yet sided with the teacher that chanting about skin color in a negative fashion to your child wasn’t hurtful.  The school board may have told you what they thought you wanted to hear and left it at that.

Maybe you don’t really love homeschooling, but you get to anyway!

Maybe you have had a kid pulled out of your car and questioned by police because you were white and they were black.  Maybe you had  to show an adoption decree in order to get your child back into your custody to prove you weren’t trafficking anyone.

Maybe you had to tell a lady at the children’s museum they could not take a picture of ‘their sweet daughter playing with your poor orphan child’.

Maybe you made someone awfully uncomfortable at that same children’s museum when they sat down by you and they looked at your black child and said in a hushed tone, ‘isn’t that just like them to drop off their kid and take off’.  Your child may have run up to you immediately after calling you ‘MOM’ causing the stranger to exit quickly with red cheeks.  And when they quickly exited to another section…you may have followed them to play so they couldn’t get away from your beautiful family.  Ya know, maybe.

Maybe you just never go to the children’s museum again.

Maybe you heard the question ‘Do they have AIDS’ so many times that you allowed your sassy pants natured child to respond, ‘Why do you ask? Do you have AIDS too?’

Maybe, just maybe, you get to answer other types of questions like why didn’t my mom want me? What am I?  Am I brown? Black? African American? Am I gonna turn white? Or do you call that yellow?

My never-met-in-real-life Facebook friend Jody Landers said this:
“Children born to another woman call me ‘Mom’. The magnitude of that tragedy and the depth of that privilege are not lost on me.”
I was so fearful my weight loss journey would stall as little seven joined the pack. A very familiar phrase started to rub me the wrong way.  IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT ME.  You know that one? It’s not all about me.  Yeah, I get it, but I didn’t entirely agree with the statement in the current situation.  Sometimes it is about me.  I spent the first 16 years of mommyhood making it all about my kids, my husband, my community and saving the world in between carpool lines.  I was tired, cranky, overweight (I think the doctor’s quote was ‘morbidly obese’).  Me and Jesus, we were tight, but I was running to another love way too often.  Who or what do you run to when you are happy? When you are sad? When you are celebrating, mourning, stressed, burnt out, feeling victorious? I used to run to food.  Emotional eater would be an understatement because typically emotional eaters run to food when things aren’t going their way.  Me? I ran to food no matter what the emotion!  All. Day. Long. So as I tried to keep a hand in the not-about-me pot whilst keeping a hand in the focusing-on-me pot, I learned Jesus could truly get me to where He wanted me.  Which in the end was 115 pounds lighter.

Jesus loves me.  Jesus loves you.  Jesus wants us to love others, even when it’s hard.  And He wants us to learn we can do hard things with Him.  So whether it’s a fitness goal, a burning in your heart to adopt a child, a desire to be a role model for a child aging out of the foster care system, or supporting a friend, acquaintance, or neighbor who is living out something difficult… run to Jesus, Sister.  Food isn’t the answer.  Booze isn’t the answer.  A Neflix marathon isn’t the answer.  Jesus is.  Take care of yourself so you can take care of others.  And don’t be scared to be scared out there in the open.  Gather yourself some cheerleaders and butt kickers.  Cause we need both.