Monday, November 28, 2011

What About The Leftovers?


Leftovers – lots of leftovers – turkey, gravy, yams, stuffing, green beans, rolls. One of the best things about Thanksgiving dinner is having leftovers for the next few days. One of my favorites is a hot turkey sandwich – leftover turkey piled high on leftover yeast rolls and then covered in leftover gravy. After a few days, we are driven to get creative with the leftovers, but to me, they are still just as good.

Did you know that a lot of the children in foster care, children waiting for a family to call their own, feel like leftovers? They have watched their friends and sometimes their family members get adopted, but they still wait. The feel like the leftovers that everyone has grown tired of.

But just as we get creative with our Thanksgiving leftovers, we can get creative with the children who wait for a forever family. It’s certainly not going to be easy to bring a teenager into your family, a teenager who has been rejected so many times that he will try to reject you. It’s not easy to bring the group of three siblings home to your quiet, clean house, but trust me, they won’t have much to bring with them to mess up your house. Or the child with significant disabilities that is spending her life in an institutional setting – all she wants, even if she can’t verbalize it, is to wake each morning with the knowledge that she is loved and wanted.

As National Adoption Awareness Month draws to a close, I implore you to examine your lives closely and see if there is any way possible that you can bring home a child who believes he is a leftover that no one wants.

2 comments:

Just the Tip said...

Ugh, this is just tugging at me. I still have this strong urge to adopt and it's such a slap in the face because a. we can't really afford it, and b. we don't have the extra bedroom.
We would never pass a home study.
I wish their were more I could do.

Ashley's Mom said...

Just The Tip, don't worry about the not being able to afford it. Children from the foster care system almost always come with an adoption subsidy to help defray the costs. As for your other concerns, you just never know until you try. Social workers are there to help you figure out everything.

But with that said, when the time is right and when you heart speaks to you to adopt, you will know!