We are one week from finalizing on S's adoption. Time has flown. She is excited. She is counting the days. She and I have both had a terrible round of the flu. We have tried to find out who could homestead their bed more. I think I may have won. Last night we were homesteading the couch and rocker and she started sharing what she had been thinking as she had laid in bed feeling yuck. I wish I had felt better to talk more but she said she had been just seeing snap shots of her life and all the dumb things she had been involved in. She looks at it now and is amazed at how stupid some of it was. I ask her what the biggest change was and she blew me away with her answer. Being aware and afraid of the big bad world, she said before she had no clue and thought she could handle it all by herself, now she sees it differently I laughed and told her I remember a little girl assuring me she was very responsible, more so than the other kids she knows. She snorted and said she didn't have a clue and she wasn't responsible. I wish I had felt more human to really discuss it all. As it was we did talk about where her “parents” were while she was making all these bad choices. It didn't matter if we were talking bio or fosters, where were they? She said “they weren't there.”
I do have to say that as crazy as it sounds adopting a 16 year old, now 17 yo has been a much easier journey than the three littles. She has such a willing spirit to grow. She is working hard on school, will finish another years worth at the end of March. She is learning to cook. I am feeling comfortable enough to allow her to do stuff without me watching to close. She hasn't tried to put ½ cup of salt in the cream of wheat in a while, instead of ½ teaspoon.
She talks often about how amazing her life is. How happy she is. In lots of ways she isn't 17 yet, but she is much closer than she was 6 months ago! We will start drivers ed after we get the name change and paper work on the adoption. I have already given her the book to start studying. I see this child that is and the adult that is to come on a daily bases right now. She is both! The adult is being refined and changed daily in expectations. She is the one that is setting and changing her expectations. We talked last week about her being afraid as she sees and wants some of the good from her bio mom but is afraid to take hold of it because so much of bio isn't good. We talked about taking the good from all the people she knows and making them into her, not bio not me not friends she looks up to, but into a new creation that is totally S.
Dad said something the other night about calling her S was now second nature. He ask her if she though of herself as S. If when she heard her name called it registered or not. She snapped her fingers and said like that. :) I have allowed her to write her church that she got Baptized in the weekend we got her. I had to chuckle as I pointed out she raved about her new life and how wonderful it was, about her new name, but no where in there did she tell them the name they knew her by. She was like, “Oh!” and added a PS at the top to let them know she use to be J. :) She really has attached to her new name.
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