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zippty_day -> RE: Men, what does this mean? (8/15/2008 11:53:13 PM)
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We've done foster care in the past and talked of adopting a child one day. Since moving to the mission field, I've often mentioned bringing home children off of the street. Recently, I've spoken of what I could do to help the children's home, even asking if I could utilize our now sold home, to bring home some of the older boys from this same children's home as they were needing to separate the older boys from the girls. My husband didn't think I could handle that many children.
As a matter of fact, the day before I brought home the baby, I asked if I could buy a puppy at the pet store and he told me no. When the baby came home it was to care for him because he had bronchitis. The director was originally thinking only a week but we began to bond with him and she's let us keep him. We only kept him as a foster child, knowing we could take him back anytime. As the week went by my husband is the one who kept saying he didn't want me to take him back. I've repeatedly asked him if he wanted me to take him back since and he always says no. Should I take him back anyway? He loves him already and to be quite frank, my husband seems to always be cycling and be stressed about something. I've never known him not to be stressed. Because we can't find the birth mother and are still looking/waiting, we can't leave the country with the baby and this makes my husband feel trapped. Maybe he's feeling trapped because he's tired too.
He had a big vote. I just introduced the baby by bringing him home. It takes only 5 minutes to take him right back. The children at the home are often 'farmed' out for the weekend. I had had one other older child over and considered bringing her home as a foster child at Christmas but nothing ever developed.
Yes, I errored by not calling him first, but he said he wasn't surprised I brought him home, just that I didn't call first about it. He even made a joke about it from the pulpit and put it in his sermon saying, "I told her she couldn't get a puppy so she brought home a baby the next day instead!" He uses a lot of sarcastic humor.
Here's another perspective:
I'm a missionary/pastor's wife living in a foreign country. How does this factor play into this scenario?
James 1:27
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
I can take him back if I need/have to, but I do love him. I understand that my husband comes first. My husband's feeling trapped. Some other forum people said what I did was a terrible thing by bringing the baby home in the first place. Was it terrible? Every person we come into contact with asks us if we're going to adopt him so naturally, it's turned into, yes if we can. My husband and I are praying for God's will, but I know that in his heart of hearts, he wants to eventually return to the states to live. What would you do? Honestly, this was a deep desire from childhood, to care for an abandoned child. My husband knows this.
I asked him at lunch if he felt that being type A that perhaps he didn't have enough to do and that's why he feels stressed? He often says he has too much to do, but it's mental/thinking/planning not physical. He said maybe. I asked him if we shouldn't talk of adopting but just keep him as a foster child? He said that was out of our control either way. I asked if he felt trapped because he couldn't just adopt him and be able to take him out of the country with us? He said maybe. Then I told him he couldn't keep the baby because of guilt and he said it wasn't a matter of guilt, it was a matter of need. We didn't plan on having another baby and it just happened because of a need. He knows I didn't go up to the shelter to get another baby to bring into our lives. A need was presented to me and I said yes.
After dinner we were running errands together and I shared with him the responses of some people on the forum. I told him one person said I usurped his authority as a husband and I could definately tell his facial expression was thinking that's a little far fetched. Yes, he would have liked to have had that call and been a part of the decision. Yes, when the other ladies came in the door with me holding the baby in the beginning they were congratulating the new father. I told him it was all weird for me too. They threw me a baby shower within a week! I think we were both caught off guard and everyone was telling us that we'll get to keep him and we hadn't even had a chance to think about it. Mexicans tell us how to adopt him, basically illegally. Americans constantly asking us if there has been any word from the birth mother. This isn't just me having some cookie idea. We were planning on having our second honeymoon when all of this happened. It certainly wasn't me planning this. I didn't say anything to correct the people because I was so shocked that I didn't know how to respond. My father in law even called to congratulate my husband when all I had done was blogged that I had a foster baby and we didn't know how long we'd be able to keep him! When people kept planting the seed over a couple of weeks that we could actually adopt him, then it turned into talk of adoption but from the get go, it was foster care for 7 months to possibly 2 1/2 years.
Tonight, after we ran up to the shelter to drop off some things, I asked him again, do you want to take him back and he said again, no. He said there isn't anyone else to be his parents and we are his parents right now. He said that IF there was another couple like us that wanted to do it then he'd feel better about giving him up. Basically, we decided that we'll keep him as long as we can. My husband says that there is no reason not to like the baby, he's adorable. But if the time comes and we decide we have to move to the states and we haven't found the babies mother, then, we'll have to give him up.
It's not a financial issue at all. We both seem to be catching up on our sleep and we're taking the baby on a family vacation with us next week here. Next month, we're leaving the country for 12 days and I have a babysitter for him because we can't take him.
quote:
As man and wife the two of you should be in unity over any decision you make. How can there be unity when you show up with the baby and the decision already made?
In this case the ONLY decision I made was to bring the baby home and nurse him back to health.
As far as stability goes...moving around goes with the ministry, just like moving goes together with being a mililtary family. I am ready to hopefully settle down.
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