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And\u2026<\/em>He DOES show up, every.single.day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Our story took a different turn when we were finally united with our son. His special needs were not what we anticipated. His limitations and \u201cissues\u201d were not what we had prepared for, read up on, and studied. Our son was unable to communicate with us in a conventional sense, and he was scared to death of us; those were a few things on a long list that we were<\/em><\/strong> anticipating (not that it made it easy\u2026it was in fact, heartbreaking to see the fear in his eyes when he looked at us, and to witness the survival instinct manifest in a child so young). But it was nothing like we had imagined. As it turned out, he wasn\u2019t at all the child we thought we\u2019d be bringing into our family.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t know why for sure, but our son was seemingly misdiagnosed. Lots of theories exist as to why this sort of thing happens in adoption situations, but I won\u2019t go into that, because I have no intention of substantiating false claims or provoking negative attention to the process or various countries. We simply believe that God spared our son the medical, social, intellectual, and emotional issues of which we had attempted to prepare to parent him through. We don\u2019t believe God necessarily spared us<\/em>, because we didn\u2019t deserve to be spared of anything. And we loved this little boy from the moment we read a brief paragraph describing him and his needs; and at that moment, we were all in no matter what.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n God spared our son, for whatever reason.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Do we breathe a little easier every day, function a little more normally, and navigate through life with fewer difficulties than we expected as a result? Of course! For his sake, and I\u2019m not gonna lie\u2026for our sakes\u2026we are so thankful. We have come to a much greater understanding of the plights of families who daily face obstacles that we cannot fathom, who fight to keep it together every.single.day.<\/strong><\/p>\n Sometimes, I feel guilty. But my husband has for years told me (he is a very wise man!), \u201cGuilt is the worst motivator.\u201d That\u2019s so true in so many forms.<\/p>\n Every parent has \u201cthose days\/weeks\/years\u201d with their kids, and we are no different. While our four other kids fairly sail through being raised by two completely and lovingly imperfect <\/em><\/strong>parents, our little guy is still catching up on some of what he missed out on for the first two-and-a-half years of his life. The older four have a plethora (yes, Honey, I said \u2018plethora\u2019) of differences, even having been born and raised of\/with the same parents\/environment. One can imagine the obstacles a child not born into this craziness has to deal with on a daily basis!<\/p>\n All of this to say, I opened our little guy\u2019s preschool backpack today, and what I saw instantly brought me to tears. <\/p>\n We\u2019re so proud of each one of our kiddos; the firsts that they have all experienced have warranted many \u201cWhoop Whooooops!\u201d and dance parties at our house! In fact, the first time our firstborn wrote his name by himself, I literally put two more pieces of paper in front of him so he could recreate his masterpiece to be mailed to his grandparents! No joke, that happened. \u00a0(And there is a picture of it somewhere, but that was before we had a digital camera!)<\/p>\n Call it what you will; this is the baby (and all of us who are the baby of the family know that the baby is always the favorite, right?). But the mere fact that he has overcome all that he has, that he has accomplished more in two-and-a-half years than we expected him to accomplish in a lifetime literally<\/em>, makes this letter \u2018J\u2019 so extremely precious to our family.<\/p>\n When I pulled this out of his backpack today, I stopped in my tracks, looked at him, and asked, \u201cHey buddy, did you write this all by yourself?\u201d He distractedly looked up and said, \u201cYeah.\u201d Like, no big deal. It\u2019s just a letter J.<\/p>\n It\u2019s way more than just a letter J to me. He\u2019s never been able to do that before, on his own. He couldn\u2019t even pronounce a letter J, let alone recognize and write <\/em><\/strong>one. And it\u2019s not even that he\u2019s \u201cbehind\u201d other kids his age, because that\u2019s all relative and as seasoned parents we try not to get caught up in that stuff anyway. No, it goes back to that brief paragraph that described him and his needs that we read almost four years ago, before we ever saw his stinking adorable face or held him in our arms, and how with that handwritten letter J, God is telling us, \u201cI\u2019m bigger than that. This is your son, and you will always love him as I love you.\u201d<\/p>\n If you\u2019re wondering why I posted this on my home interior blog and wondering what in the world this has to do with interior design, I\u2019ll tie it in this way: my little guy wants nothing more than to add his own touches to the room he shares with his big brother who in a month-and-a-half will become a teenager. I have so many qualms about allowing my children to decorate their own rooms, so when you combine those hesitations with a teenager\u2019s ideas and a toddler\u2019s ideas\u2026well, the struggle is real, y’all. <\/p>\n![\"IMG_8738\"](\"http:\/\/www.jjordan.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/IMG_8738.jpg\")
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