I know what you're thinking. "You've been a family since you got home!" Well, yes and no. We were a family outwardly because we had all the ingredients. We lived in the same home, we ate together, worshiped together, belonged to each other. But there was an alien in our house, a really cute, loved, amazing alien, but an alien non the less.
We knew he was ours but it took time to sink in, to feel whole, to feel natural. For Chad and I, the love was instant. We have adored Micah from day 1. For Devon, Micah was the competition who swooped in took all the attention and turned his world upside down. It's hard to be a family when one child does not love the other.
It was rough. We didn't FEEL like a family. The adoption roller coaster didn't stop when we got home. We got off the "waiting, traveling" coaster and on to the "waiting to be "normal" coaster. This was unexpected and hard to take.
But days went by and slowly but surely Devon began to love Micah, Micah began to attach to us, we began to feel a deep attachment for him, and the family began to emerge.
But it's a different family.
It doesn't look like it used to. I am not the Mom I was. There are fewer cookies, missed appointments, late payments, piles of dirty laundry that were not there before Micah. There are less
play-dates, even less dinners out, and virtually NO date nights.
But this family has MORE. More love, more laughter, more joy, more fun. Two times the dirty faces, two times the smiles. Two times the screams, two times the laughter. Two times the laundry, two times the mud pies.
MORE JOY, MORE LOVE, MORE FAMILY. FINALLY.
Jeremiah Desalegne Low
