Is It Worth It?

(Originally posted on my FB page on 9/12/15)

Someone asked me yesterday if, given the chance to do it all over again, I'd still choose this crazy path that I'm on.

It was an interesting question on the day when one of my sweet boys solved a problem by pushing and kicking his friend. My youngest cried off and on for forty minutes before bed. We had countless conversations about putting others first and not acting as if the world revolves around one person. Manners had been thrown out the window, and patience was MIA. For every minute spent playing or sitting quietly, there were five minutes spent arguing. Oh, and we ate dinner at Taco Bell for the millionth time because who has time for anything else?!

My kids bring out the very worst in me sometimes - especially yesterday. I can use a sarcastic tone and make ya feel two inches tall in two seconds flat. I raise my voice way too much - and my goodness, lately I've got the "If you do that again, just wait til we get home because" threats down to an art.

And - oh man - as a (selfish) adoptive parent, I'm really struggling with the constant parenting advice my children give me, based on what previous mothers (foster/birth/etc) have done. How to get Goose to sleep, what our dinnertime routine should be, what the consequence should be when the boys argue, how everyone should do their hair - You name it, my kids have already seen the perfect solution for it. I guess all mommas deal with that to some extent, but we have a lengthy list of moms who came before me and they apparently ALL had fabulous parenting ideas that I NEED to know about. ...And I'm ashamed to think about the number of times that I've snapped in reply, "This parenting thing. I'm good. I've got this." (Hello, cat claws.)

Of course, there's also the little detail that I spend all day with kids at work... and then I practically drive a school bus full of kids home to spend all evening and weekends with. Free time? Adult time? Pshh, no.

So, knowing what I know now, would I really spend another year fighting for THIS?

Then I think about the statistics. The number of foster homes that kids bounce in and out of. The likelihood that older children even get adopted. The chances of being a successful adult when you "age out" of foster care.

Or, forget statistics. I think about knowing that I have been given so much but choosing to share so little, or about what it would be like to see one of these faces on the front page of the newspaper and to be overcome with "what ifs". I think about living the rest of my life, knowing that I walked away from the smiles and the laughter that stole my heart.

I'm pretty sure that I am walking - no, sprinting into the hardest, most stressful days of my life. There are (LOTS of) days that I wonder what the heck I'm doing. But I'm positive I'm where I'm supposed to be, and I'd sign up again for this crazy life in a heartbeat.