Instant family

My wife and I just said "Yes!" to a sibling set of sisters who were in need of a forever home.

A week ago I happened upon the trailer for the new Mark Wahlberg dramedy, Instant Family. It was a moment of mindless YouTube browsing that turned into a divine appointment.

In a world where Pete (Wahlberg) and Ellie (Rose Byrne) decide to start their family through foster-to-adoption, hilarity ensues and stress overwhelms. The couple go from zero kids to three essentially overnight when they welcome in a sibling set of three with the intent to adopt. Hence the title. It’s set to release in mid November and is based on writer and producer Sean Anders’ experience with foster care and adoption.

I’m skeptical that Marky Mark and the guy responsible for Daddy’s Home and Daddy’s Home 2 can handle the whirlwind that is foster-to-adoption with grace and nuance. But seeing how I was in tears by the end of the trailer (it was Wahlberg's “I just got my first ‘Daddy’!” that did it), maybe Anders’ family's journey into adoption will make this an instant classic. (Sorry, had to.)

My reaction was also due to the fact that my wife and I just said yes to a sibling set of sisters who were in need of a forever home. We were matched in late August, and they moved in last Thursday. Our family went from three to five in two weeks. Our son, James, who we were finally able to adopt in June after a two-and-a-half year process, is now the older brother of two sisters. Lindsey and I are studying Syracuse Men’s Basketball film for Jim Boeheim's finer principles of zone defense. The girls are precious and aching for permanency and stability. We’re thankful.

We’re also exhausted. Foster-to-adoption is a beautiful, amazing, terrifying, gut-checking experience. “This is never going to be easy,” Octavia Spencer’s character says in the Instant Family trailer.

It’s hard for reasons you don’t see coming. The day the girls arrived, Lindsey got a call from the Greeley police. James’s biological mother had called the police claiming that her son had been abducted and was trying to get him back. The officer who called was aware of James’s adoption and was just calling to make sure we were okay and hadn’t heard from or seen James’s biological mom.

Nothing like a paranoid, meth-addicted bio mom to harsh the vibe of the move-in day of your new daughters.

New daughters. What? Is this really happening? I have daughters now. Two of them. They are 4 and 2-years-old, respectively. They are heart-melting in the best of ways. We love them. There are attachment issues, especially with the older one, that will have to be worked through. As true as Wahlberg’s delight in being called “Daddy" is, it is just as common for kids in the foster system to indiscriminately label a caretaker with parental terms. The first day we met the girls, I was daddy after about five minutes. Welcoming new kids to your home who have lived in multiple homes and who have had multiple moms and dads is just…it’s a weird thing. These aren’t newborns; attachment doesn’t happen overnight. You feel more like a babysitter than a parent, even though that’s what you are. Even though the 2-year-old will look up at me and say, “Daddy” over and over again as I echo by saying her name.

The new reality can be disorienting. What happened to my normal and totally manageable life with just one child? It took the three of us nearly two years to feel like a “normal” family. Our home had plenty of room. Our car had plenty of room. Our schedules had plenty of room. We weren’t perfect by any means, but we had healthy routines and a cadence that worked well. And James is more than we could have ever asked for. He’s an amazing boy, full of sword fights, Legos and constant conversation. I could have been perfectly content with this arrangement.

Then, in an instant, all that familiarity and stability disappeared into the whirlwind. Everything is different. I know that this is probably the same for parents who bring their biological kids home from the hospital. And adoptive parents who go overseas for their kids are often met with a host of heavy challenges and uncertainties. I say all this to acknowledge that I know that I’m not the only one wrestling with these tensions, or even that our journey is over-the-top difficult. It’s mostly to say that I can be not great, Bob, at sudden, life-altering changes. Even if those changes are brown-eyed princesses. You try to prepare yourself and your family, but you can only do so much until the backseat of the Subaru is jammed with three car seats and the spare bedroom looks like a doll convention.

This process, then, is hard for reasons you see coming but can’t do anything about. The girls’ county case manager and their guardian ad litems (court-appointed attorneys) are required to see the girls in their new home within 24 hours of being placed. We knew they’d be coming the afternoon the girls arrived. We knew it’d be crazy. About 20 minutes after the foster parents dropped off the girls and left, the case manager and one of the attorneys showed up. We had told James that they were coming over, but the arrival of the case manager especially triggered James. Before his adoption was finalized, he often talked about wanting his case manager to stop visiting. So here was a new case manager. All those forgotten, trauma-fueled feelings of insecurity and fear of losing his home and parents and siblings came pouring out. Even after the case manager left, James had a rough night. He was fearful and almost inconsolable when we tried to put the girls to bed first, even after explaining to him that bedtimes would be a little different.

So there we were, a family of five. A home in transition. Imagine moving and giving birth to kids with fully formed personalities at the same time, and you have an idea of where Lindsey and I were emotionally and mentally.

James, by God’s grace, calmed down. We read a couple pages of The Hobbit. (James loves it. We just arrived in Lake-town.) Everyone was in bed a little after 10 p.m. Deep breath.

A couple of days before the girls arrived, I asked Lindsey, “Are you scared?”

“I’m 15 percent terrified,” she said.

I don’t know what percent of terrified I felt as I got ready for bed last Thursday night, but I know that I had more than one Bilbo-like moment where I wished for the comforts and familiarity of the life I had recently left behind.

“People who take in foster kids are really special,” someone else tells Pete and Ellie in the Instant Family trailer. I don’t know. I, for one, can be fearful, anxious and reluctant to expose my heart to the vulnerabilities of loving kids from hard places. But you learn to love by loving. And I’m a sinner in need of mercy.

Flannery O'Connor observed that "grace changes us and the change is painful." It is a grace that we have been given an instant family. It is a grace that Lindsey and I have daughters. It is a grace that James has sisters. It is a grace to be on this adventure. God has been kind. Prayers are being answered. The most interesting things happen on the other side of our comfort zone.

But receiving an instant family is not all May sunshine and pony rides, as Bilbo found out. He ran out the door scared and unprepared. The girls came to our door scared and unprepared; Lindsey and I were at least 15 percent scared and unprepared. There is pain here. Christian Wiman wrote that "every experience is dyed with [sorrow's] color," and that "even in moments of joy, part of that joy is the seams of ore that are our sorrow." These seams "make joy the complete experience that it is."

Change is painful. God's promises are true. The road goes ever on and on. Sometimes through valleys. This is what I must remind myself: God has traveled this road before and he is traveling with us now. He is not a stranger to pain. And he will bring the early rain and make our way a place of springs (Psalm 84:6).