Many of you know that my wife and I are in the process of adopting a child from China. One thing we quickly learning about the adoption community was its almost global embracing of digital journaling.

When most people think of an adoption, they have vision of fast celebrity adoptions. And while that may be the case in the private adoptions that most celebrities do, for the average user it is typically a multi-year process.

It stands to reason then that journal play in important role in the journey laid ahead of adoptive parents. To that end I have purchased the LadyBugBlogs.com domain and plan to begin development of a WordPress Mu based multi-user blogging system.

My idea is to provide a community blogging solution with features and themes tailored to the adoptive parents needs and desires. China and other Asian adoptions are focus group for LadybugBlogs.com.

The Ladybug in an important symbol in China adoptions, its incorporation into the blog domain name seemed only fitting.

As a writer, its important to know your strengths and weaknesses. Being aware of these flaws only helps to make your writing better, and to avoid the inevitable pitfalls that one can find themselves in because of them.

Take me for instance. Prone to spelling errors and questionable use of grammar, I know that I am a multi-edit type of person. Sometimes my writing makes the first cut, sometimes the 5th. Generally speaking though, two to three edits seems to be my norm.

I have also learned from painful example that when I attempt to be funny, witty, or sarcastic I usually end up looking like an asshat. So is something I try to avoid.

My wife recently brought to my attention an article that appeared in the Daily Southtown titled “Foreign orphans better than ours“. It had surfaced on an international adoption group that my wife started and had caused quite the stir. No doubt Mr. Kadner’s intention.

Adoption is an emotion soaked experience, it doesn’t matter if it is domestic or international. Here in th states the public is largely uninformed about the adoption process, costs and reasons that people turn to adoption.

I keep going back and forth trying to decide if Kadner was attempting to write something satirical, trying to be funny or just clueless. I’ve always considered writing effective if it makes me think about something, generally speaking I like those thoughts to be about the topic being written and not about the mental state of the writer.

Kadner’s rant supposes that American orphan’s are somehow lesser in quality than international orphans. Horse puckey. What he fails to realize is that people turn to international adoptions because of a desire for structure, order and assured end results — A Baby.

Domestic adoptions of young children are subjective, an applicant family needs to be chosen by a birth mother. We personally have know people who waited over a year to be chosen, only to turn to international adoption for some semblance of a structured timetable.

Add to that the fact that almost a third of birth mothers change their minds and decide to keep the baby. Good for them, bad for the family that has become emotionally invested and wasted what could amount to years of their time.

Many adoptive families have already gone through years of heartbreak prior to starting the adoption process. These are people who desperately want to be parents, to raise a baby. Its an amazing experience, why is that so hard for Kadner to understand?

In the end, Kadner comes off looking like an uneducated bush league writer trying to be witty, and funny and failing miserably. His choice to people and topic to address could only be worse if he had targeted the handicapped or mentally ill. Oh well, I suppose he always has next week.

When times are good. If things go your way, its easy to have faith in God. But when the shit hits the fan… that… is when your faith is really tested. Its human nature to want to blame something, someone for your misfortune.

All too many times we stand shaking our fist at the sky — Cursing God or what we perceive as an uncaring universe. We want something to blame. We need it. It gives us an anchor to hold onto — it keeps up from being consumed by the misery maelstrom threatens to suck us into the vortex of depression.

They say when it rains, it pours. Having just lost my sole surviving Grandfather, you would think heaping another loss onto my shoulders would be almost too much to bear.

But I don’t see my Grandfather’s passing as senseless, as unfair or even uncaring. He was ninety-two, he lived a full life. Listening to stories, seeing pictures of him in his younger years and knowing in my heart that it was in fact his time, does not cause me to rage against God.

It gives me pause to thank him for giving him a long life, a loving wife, and three great children. He had a fascinating life, and seeing him suffering as he was, death was a relief as much for him as it was for those who watched him wither away.

Its easy to have Faith when life is good…

Such a simple truth, and so easy to take for granted. As some may know my wife and I are in the process of adopting a little girl from China. The process is long and drawn out, more waiting that I ever thought I would have the patience for, and something that will not become a reality for several years.

What not everyone knows is that we felt moved to start a concurrent adoption for an eight year old Taiwanese girl. We want a bigger family and it looked like she would be the perfect fit for us. With three half siblings 20 minutes from us and as the closest family to apply for consideration, we thought our chances were very good.

The agency assured us that proximity to her siblings was very important. So we slowly began to hope with guarded hesitancy. Go through a number of failed fertility treatments and you quickly learn how to put armor around your heart as a protection measure.

What was five families, became three. We were among the three still under consideration. Additional questions were sent to us and another couple. Was it a good sign? Was it a bad sign? Anxiety began to build.

I would be lying if I said that I didn’t pray to God that we be chosen. We wanted her to be our daughter it seemed like destiny. After a month I received a phone call at work.

My wife Karin was on the phone, crying, sobbing. I knew instantly it was about Chia-Jung. We had not been chosen. We would learn that despite our location, Chia-Jung’s desire to be the youngest child had ultimately been the deciding faction. With a six year old son, we could not offer her what her heart ultimately needed.

Most shocking was the news that the family that was chosen was located in Michigan, over two and a half hours away. We felt a crushing blanket of depression descending upon us.

Its easy to have Faith when things go your way…

I found myself in a detached position. My normal reaction would be to apply blame to something, anything. To run out and curse God and the heavens. I have done it more times than I can remember. This time something was different inside me.

I can remember telling myself that God wasn’t punishing me, that I had a choice of how I could view this moment in life. I could see it as random, I could see it as payback for some sin, or… I could accept that it was part of God’s divine plan.

I actually found myself asking how I can use this event to serve God. Was that grace working within me? I don’t know if I will ever know. I chose ultimately to view it as part of God’s plan. Its a plan none of us can fathom, its a plan that to have comfort in requires one key thing — Faith.

Faith is easy when life is good. Faith is hard when life is hard. The question really comes down to this — How genuine is your faith?

I’ve spent a lot of years going through the motions. This may be the first time in my life when my faith has not faltered, when it was genuine.

I think one of the greatest gifts of getting old is the ability to look back on your life and ponder why you acted a certain way or developed a certain habit or way of life. One of the things that I have noticed about myself is that I tend to be hopefully pessimistic about things.

That is to say that I am hopeful that things will go my way and work out, but prepared from the start for the very real possibility that it will fail. Looking back at the emotional roller-coaster that Karin and I rode for years trying to conceive, its no real shocker that I tend to hold this view.

I think its also a reason why I am so varied in my interests and hobbies. If I try something and hate it, I can just move onto something else. No pressure, no worry of failure.

Once in a while, everyone needs to step outside of their comfort zone. Today is my day. With the ever growing wait times in China, we decided to start a concurrent adoption for an eight year old girl from Taiwan named Chia-Jung.

We fell in love with her story and knew she was destined to be our daughter. So we applied to adopt her. We were one of five families under consideration. Yesterday we were told that they have narrowed the number of families down to three, and that we were one of the three.

They had additional questions for ourselves and one other family. What did this mean? Did they like the two who were asked more questions better than the one who did not? Or did it just mean that we needed to provide more information to match the one not asked? Maddening questions to contemplate. So, we provided our answers to the best of our ability and sent the paperwork off to be sent to Taiwan.

Normally I would try to not think about the process during the waiting period. I would assume that we would not be chosen, and prepare myself accordingly. Self, I say… SCREW THAT! I am going to hope and pray and wish and dream and invest myself emotionally with all of my will bent on the assumption that we will be chosen.

When or not we are chosen, I expect to be flooded by unbridled emotion. It will either by joy or grief, that much I know. What I refuse to do this time is wall myself off from the potential pain. All I have to say is…. You better bring it!