I can’t believe our sweet boy is one today! What a year! Aaron and I have been re-telling and re-living different moments we remember from “this time last year.” So many precious moments of history that we have built with our third child. It has been a year of tears and laughter---and little sleep!---but we wouldn’t change any of it. Asher is a gift of God’s love and grace to us and we are honored and humbled to be his mommy and daddy.
I’ve been reflecting a lot on how parenting him as been different than parenting Levi and Bella. I know many may not think that we would parent Asher any differently since we adopted him from birth and were holding him an hour and half after his delivery but his story is completely different than Levi or Bella’s and we honor that in how we love him.
Asher may not have spent the first years of his life in an orphanage but he has experienced loss. He lost his first family----and that’s huge. Yes, he has been held (no kid has been held as much as he has!) and kissed and loved since day one by us, but we are not his biological parents and that will never change. And one day he will feel that loss. We have been intentional about the time we held him and fed him and talked to him to develop attachment with him. Every baby comes in to this world having heard their parents voices during their time in utero. I remember distinctly Bella crying and me talking to her and her stopping crying immediately. I was familiar to her. I had 40 weeks of history with her. We didn’t have that with Asher. We were virtual strangers to him and had to grow in that attachment with him. Because of this we made sure we gave him almost all of his feedings the first few months of his life and we have never let him “cry it out.” We want him to know that when he cries, we respond. We are building trust and safety and connection with him and letting him know that his voice matters. And if you have been around Asher in person, you might agree that we have succeeded on this point. The kid has a LOUD voice and he’s not afraid to use it!
We will always do our best to honor his loss and parent him knowing that while adoption is beautiful (and it is!) it is borne from loss and we believe that God can and does make beauty from ashes.
We are so thankful today to see healing already taking place in Asher’s life. We see him being more settled in his spirit, sleeping more soundly, laughing and smiling often. He is a joy to be around and a complete blessing to our family. So often adoptive parents hear from others how the child they have adopted is so lucky to have been adopted. And they mean well. But we believe the complete opposite of this sentiment. We know that we are the “lucky” ones. We are the ones who have been given so much from Asher. He has given us a glimpse of God’s love for us, he has helped us depend more on Jesus when we have had no more of our own strength to rely on, he has taught my kids how to love and serve when it gets hard and he has given us more joy than we could imagine. We are the recipients of an unimaginable grace that humbles us daily.
Happy Birthday John Asher Slaten! You are so loved by your WHOLE family!
