What I Know About My Future

I know--at least as firmly as it is possible to know anything about one's future--that one day I will adopt and parent a little girl with special needs, more specifically Down syndrome.  I'll say it right out loud, right here, right now: adoption was never my "Plan A" for building a family.  "Plan A" involved four healthy, biological children, and I am still grieving that loss.

But.  But but but.

My "Plan B" could be God's "Plan A" all along, for we always say in our prayers that God is the God of the orphan.

My future "Plan B" family will look very different from how my future "Plan A" family would have looked.  If I actually go through with this plan, adopting a little girl with Down syndrome, it will probably be hard enough that she will be my only child.  If I have learned one thing through my own "special needs" (I don't like that term) or disabilities (that is the term I "like"), it is that children with special needs just need love and care like anybody else...and I can give that.

I know that this "Plan B" will be challenging.  Adopting anyone is hard, for the child and the parent, and special needs make the process harder.  But my "Plan B" is God's "Plan A"; it just took me a while to see it.  Adoption, here I come!

And just by coincidence, it is time to share a Reece's Rainbow girl...so naturally, to fit with this post, I am sharing one who is diagnosed with Down syndrome.  Please meet "CHANTELLE-ANN."  In terms of when she's aging out, all her information says is 2001, but again, if she's on that page, she has at most EIGHTEEN MONTHS.  As well as Down syndrome, she has crossed eyes.