Other People's Kids

Shifting Attention

The lag in fostering lately has given me unwelcome time to focus on our adoption process. Unwelcome because, well, nothing is happening there either. Like clockwork, every month they notify us that they need an ungodly sum of money for more profiles. About $150 for 10 profiles, and each profile is a few pages of printed paper, nothing fancy. I smell a scam, plus we have no evidence that they're even handing these things to anybody that's interested.

Anyway, I've put all that in God's hands. If we're supposed to be parents, He'll see to it. If not, well, I guess He'll see to that too, and who am I to argue with a decision the Almighty has made for my life?

I guess the things that have me the most aggravated are the tangential things.

Now, I KNOW it's not my fault. I KNOW I'm as much of a man as the shiftless teenage bastard who sweet-talks his girlfriend into the back seat and then disappears when he gets her pregnant. I KNOW those things. At least intellectually. But I think until you've walked in this particular pair of shoes, it's probably hard to imagine just how much they HURT YOUR DAMNED FEET.

I can't help but feel inferior somehow. A lot of my ex-wife's frustration with our marriage was based on the fact that she wanted a baby, and she wanted it to be hers. The Wife at least knew what she was getting into from the start and she continues to be absolutely great about it...but it still hurts to see her wanting a baby so badly and not being able to give it to her. It hurts to think how relieved some of my ex-girlfriends would be with the news that they escaped a relationship with a guy who couldn't have given them the children their husbands have given them with no problem.

It basically is just something that most people seem to take for granted, and some people honestly do seem to view a guy who can't have kids as inferior. Now, most of the time that doesn't bug me. I'm usually able to see that kind of weak thinking for what it is. But with all the spare time I've had lately, I've had too much time to think about things like this. Too much time to consider the shabby treatment I've seen people give their own kids without any awareness of what a gift from God those kids are.

Gah.

posted by Dan @ 6:50 PM