ROAD TO ADOPTION - MITCHELL FAMILY STORY

(MUSIC PLAYS)

No Audio: Joe and Rae Mitchell, Foster and Adoptive Parents

Joe Mitchell: I don't think we ever sat down and blue-printed what our family would look like ultimately, because if we had it probably would have scared us have to death. We worked into it gradually. 

Rae Mitchell: What motivated us to become foster parents is my husband had actually lived in a foster home for a while, and after we got married and had a couple of our own, we agreed that if we were going to have any more children that we were taking kids that needed foster homes. Together we just agreed that that was the direction that our family would go. 

Joe Mitchell: She started wanting another baby, so we revived that idea of becoming foster parents, and that's when we began the process that started 19 years ago. And, you know, as I said, we started with a baby, with one baby. And, of course, starting with a baby is easy. 

You know, they're cute and cuddly and fun, but as it progressed and we became attached to the kids, then adoption just became the natural progression. It was just the right thing to do. And we couldn't have done it any other way, because you become very attached to a child. And have we had to give a few up?  Yes. 

We've had to say goodbye to a few, and it's always difficult. It's always challenging. It's... I would say it's almost like a death in the family, when you've had a child for a year, for example. We had one that came to us at three and a half and left at four and a half. 

And we knew she wasn't going back to a better situation than she had come out of, and that was difficult. But you get used to it. It's hard to say that you get used to it, because you don't ever really get calloused to it. But you know that it's part of what you do. But to build our family through adoption was just something that became a natural progression. 

Once you've had a child for a year, two years, that child becomes part of your family, and for us, I think we may have approached it a little bit differently than some foster families do. We've always had a policy that when a child comes in our home, they're family until the day they leave. 

We don't treat them as foster children. We treat them as our kids. They go to church with us, they eat meals with us, they go on vacation with us, and we simply could not do it any other way. So, for us, adoption just kind of happened, you know? 

We didn't really plan it that way, but that's the way it has happened, and now, of course, we do plan it that way. We've had a lot of fun experiences. When you have six kids under the age of what? 12, and you go to a restaurant, you get some interesting comments, especially when they're multi-ethnic. 

We've had people come up to us and say, "You must be a daycare." And we say, "Yeah, days, nights, weekends." We've had people come up and ask, "Are you a church youth group?" you know, as the kids got older. About half of it. So, we've had a lot of fun experiences and a lot of interesting comments from people. And we sort of evolved towards teenagers, because we had teenagers and it was easier to take teenagers since we had teenagers. 

No Audio: Alisha, Adopted at age 3

Alisha: Adoption has meant a lot, just watching, like, my parents, I guess, more or less giving themselves to kids that don't... you know, deserve more but they can't get it from their first families. And for me it's meant just having someone just taking you for who you are, accepting you and just, you know, giving everything of themselves to be, you know, just like your first family. 

Jim Mitchell: Have we faced some issues? Yes, we've had a lot of issues that we've had to deal with. We have taken in a teenager with a brand new baby. And that's interesting, to raise a child who's raising a child.

No Audio: Jessie, Adopted at age 14
 
Jessie: So, I got moved to the maternity group home, and at... I stayed there until I had Alisha, and then they had another placement for me. And at that home, I stayed there for two weeks and the lady... she was having some... it wasn't with me, because she didn't say it was with me. She said she had some issues that she had to deal with.

But she... I went to court one day and I came back and she had put all my stuff on the front porch and told me I had... they had to put me somewhere else, so. Then, after that, I moved here. So, I came here as a foster child with my daughter into this family, and they accepted me and they loved on me and my daughter. 

It's hard for a mom and a daughter to stay together, so. If I hadn't come here, then my daughter and I might have been separated, because it is always hard finding a place for somebody to take me and my daughter, because they didn't... nobody wanted to take me. I remember the day that I got put out of that house, it took, like, all day for me to find another place for me, and... because they called, like, several people and nobody would take me, so - just because I had a daughter, and because it's hard to place two at the same time. So, yeah. 

So if somebody had never opened up their heart to take me and my daughter, we could have been separated, and that would have been... I can't picture my life without her, so that would have been really hard. 

Jim Mitchell: For us, it has been an incredible experience, to watch the teenage mom grow up as a child herself, and as a teenager herself, but also as a mom, and to begin to demonstrate the care and the responsibility that a mom needs to have with a child. And it's been a lot of fun. It's been very rewarding. 

Rae Mitchell: And we get a grandbaby. It's awesome. 

Joe Mitchell: That's right. Two for one. 

Alisha: They take you in for who you are no matter what you've done or how your past has been, and they just make you part of their family. 

Rae Mitchell: It felt normal, you know, like these kids say, "We came in here and mom and dad made us feel like we're home." Well, they're home. How can you send them any place else? 

Joe Mitchell: It's a risk. You have no guarantee that that child is going to end up being perfect. In fact, you pretty much have a guarantee they won't end up being perfect. But, then, you have a good guarantee that your birth children won't end up being perfect either. 

So, you know, if we waited until the situation was right to decide to adopt, we'd probably never do it. It is something where you step out in faith and you do it. And do you get your nose bloody once and while? Yeah. But the end result is that that child's life is changed. I think what we're looking for right now is, we're looking for... it's almost ready to come full circle for us. 

We have older kids who I think, very soon, one of them is married already and has kids, but we think that very soon some of our children will begin to do the same thing that we do. And when that comes full circle then that's gratifying. 

For parents who are thinking about fostering, I would recommend you get to know some people who are doing it. I think that's the best way to really get a good view of what it's like, but you'll never get the best view until you do it yourself. And, again, it's one of those things that's a leap of faith. You jump in, you do it. 

Are you always going to have enough money? No. Is your house going to be big enough? No. Is your car going to be big enough? No. You know, you keeping moving up. We started in a two-bedroom, one-bath house, and moved from there to a four-bedroom house, and we've had to keep moving up. And we started in a little, tiny car, and now we have a 15-passenger van. You know? 

Where does it come from? We don't know. We live by faith, day by day. But it's something where we just jumped in, decided that we were going to do it and now, 19 years later, we look back, we're seeing the results of it, and, again we would not change course. Would we? 

Rae Mitchell: No. We wouldn't. 

Joe Mitchell: Not today, anyway. 

Rae Mitchell: And we don't consider ourselves saints. People look at you and tell you that you must be a saint to be able to do this. I'm not a saint. I'm just... you pray and using God's strength and I'm blessed beyond measure with the children that have come into my home. 

Jessie: If you've been thinking about taking a kid in, not necessarily to adopt him but just to help out. Don't worry about money, don't worry about the beds and whatever you need, just worry about the love that you need to give to them. Because the money and everything, that'll come and that'll go, but the love that you need to give them will remain in their heart forever. 

Alisha: There's kids out there that need you to adopt them and they need to be loved and they need to feel like they're needed, because if they just keep moving around to foster home, foster home, that's not doing anything for them. And once they grow up, they won't have that family setting in them and they'll be missing something. 

Jim Mitchell: We get about five standard responses from people when we tell them what we do. The one we get most often is, "I could never do what you do." And the truth is, you can. We did. Then we hear people say, "You must be really special people." And the truth is we're not. We just made a decision to do it. And... what other things do we hear? 

Rae Mitchell: How can you afford it? 

Joe Mitchell: How would it affect my birth children? Yeah, that's a big concern that people have. Are they going to get them dirty or something, you know? Does it affect your birth children? Yeah, it does. It has affected ours tremendously. 

They are more able to interact with people. They have better people skills. They're more patient. They're better leaders. They're better at caring for their own kids. I can't think of any downside in terms of how it has affected our birth children. 

And now it's not so much about what we do, it's more who we are, because this is what we're about. This is our mission in life, and we're pretty passionate about it. 

Alisha: I'd say to parents that are afraid to adopt, it's normal to be afraid, but it shouldn't be that much of a deal because it... God tells us to give ourselves to people that are less fortunate of... and just to be like Him to children that don't have families, and I'm just saying, you got to do it because that's what you're here for.