a letter to kamelia

Dear Kami,

I recently shared a letter to your birthmother here, and now I'd like to write one to you. This week your dad and I have set the wheels in motion on a big decision, a decision the likes of which has never even been discussed in our family. I want to tell you before it happens and explain as many of the whys and hows as I can. You probably won't be able to understand them until much later in the future, but whenever you're ready to try, this letter will be here for you to read.

By God's perfect design, you were adopted into a homeschooling family. I am one of the most militant homeschooling moms that I know when it comes to the education of my babies. I have even gotten into trouble a few times by publicly sharing my beliefs on the matter as it pertains to my children. I was eager and determined to homeschool you when God brought you into our family. We knew there would be months of playing developmental catch-up, but we felt prepared. With no way of knowing any different, we assumed you would gradually gravitate toward the school table to at least sit and peripherally listen to your siblings' lessons. What we failed to account for was that having been raised in an institution, none of this family business came naturally to you, much less the idea of engaging in academic adventures alongside your new family members. In the past two years that I've schooled Ezekiel and Eden, I've often and enthusiastically broadcasted the idea that the most important factor in the decision to homeschool is whether or not a parent truly enjoys being with their children all day, every day. In order for homeschooling to be a joyful and fruitful venture, there should be a mutual feeling of looking forward to seeing one another each morning, eager for teaching, learning, and growing in both knowledge and relationships. In this way we intend to diligently build a foundation for our children that will prepare them to fulfill God's unique purposes for their lives. God has a purpose for your life, Kamelia, a purpose so unique that He specifically called you to leave your country of origin and placed you into this family so we could help you begin to heal from the darkness of the past and move forward into the light.

Kami, you and I both know that not every morning has found us happily greeting one another. The past year hasn't been easy for either one of us. And with the pain of your history and the three other significant demands on my time named Ezekiel, Eden, and Isaiah, it's been difficult for me to strike a balance between being the teacher, friend and trainer they need versus the teacher, friend and trainer you need. The Lord used a difficult week last week to show me something: that homeschooling may not be the best option for you or for me right now. I honestly had not considered this fact until 3 days ago - the morning of Sunday, September 27, right before leaving for church, to be exact. The irony of this situation is extreme to me, as anyone who knows me well will be shocked to hear the news: that we are enrolling you in our local public school!

We can see the school from our front porch and hear the children playing on the playground. When God showed us this house and we rented it sight unseen before moving here, we would never have guessed that we would actually be utilizing the services of the institution that stood on the other side of the fence. But as I've prayed and thought about it these few days, I've felt excited, hopeful, and suddenly, unexpectedly, overwhelmingly peaceful that this could be exactly what you and I both need. It's been three months since we said goodbye to your wonderful occupational therapist in our last town, and it's time to get you back into the therapy that you need to continue your recovery. With your dad's recent change in employment and health insurance coverage, we were already planning on pursuing therapy through the school system - we just didn't know that we would also end up pursuing enrolling you as a full-time student!

We're praying that attending institutional school will remind you of the good parts of your history. We know you enjoyed taking the bus to your school in Bulgaria and being there during the day. We rejoice that now, when your schooldays end, you will not return to harsh, empty walls but rather to hugs from your parents and siblings in the warmth of your new home where you've grown comfortable. We pray that in school, you will receive the therapy that you need, and that it will help you blossom and grow into the joyful, capable girl that God has made you to be. We love you and hope you know that we're making this decision with your best interests in mind. I think you'll enjoy being at school, and I think you'll probably want to go even on days off; but I want to make sure that you don't one day look back and feel rejected when you compare your path with your siblings' path. You are different from them, and that's alright. We may have adopted you thinking that you would become "one of them," but now I see that we adopted you to help you become the real you, which doesn't need to be just like your siblings. We are all privileged to see you grow and change on this journey of learning how to do life. Over the past year we've watched you become a new person, from a wild, infantile 7-year-old to a generally calm and rapidly maturing 8-year-old who is remarkably more in control of her body and emotions. You have learned to understand a new language and to speak in sentences for the first time in your life. Your toilet training within one year of coming home showed that your mind and body were hungry and ready for self-discipline, the teaching and modeling of which were tragically robbed from you in your early years. You've learned to chew your food, to respect personal space, to treat bookshelves and soap dispensers responsibly, and a host of other things that we had never even thought about having to learn. You had to be taught all of this, but more importantly you had to choose to learn it. And you did. You started out your family life at a huge deficit, but you've been resilient and persistent in your catch-up. As I look back on your first 15 months in a family, I see that this time of homeschool has prepared you to re-enter institutional school - this time as a daughter, not an orphan.

Pictures to come! We hope to have her starting by the end of October. Please pray for God to use her and her story to point others to Him as she enters this new arena!