Is "Good Enough" Good Enough?

I have always felt pretty good about my life.  I rarely questioned whether we were like “everyone else”.  Instead, I pretty much assumed that we were.   I figured that the home lives of our friends were a lot like ours.  Sure, my husband and I have arguments every now and then.  Yes, I lose my patience with my daughter sometimes and need to walk away or give myself a mommy time out.  I am pretty sure this happens to most spouses and most parents from time to time.  Even with these imperfections, I was confident that my life was “normal”.  Entering the paperwork and home study phase of the adoption process, I would have to say that even the most confident person would feel anxiety having someone else judge you and your worthiness of having a child.  Suddenly, my assumption of being like everyone else doesn’t feel so secure anymore.

In mid-September my husband and I went to the information meeting for our adoption agency.  We received a thick envelope of paperwork that we needed to fill out.  Along with the paperwork, we had to get our fingerprints done for an FBI background check, get physicals for ourselves and our daughter, and submit our employment records for our current jobs.  Being a person who likes to get things done quickly, I happily tore into the paperwork the next day.  However, my progress was stalled when I stumbled upon what I would call the “difficult questions” section.  I knew that they would have to ask personal questions, but I didn’t realize it would start in the initial paperwork.  People who have already been through the process will probably tell me that the difficult, personal questions have just begun.  The first question that caused me to pause was, “How often do you and your spouse argue?”  I really have never had any reason to keep track of how often we argue.  And furthermore, what would be a “normal” amount of arguments to have in any given period of time?  The next question was, “What are the major areas of conflict in your relationship?”  Here we ran into a disagreement.  I wanted to just put a couple of things that we argue about more regularly.  That was my interpretation of “major areas of conflict”.  My husband had a different interpretation.  During this process I was thinking that they should include a question saying, did you get into an argument while answering this questionnaire?  Luckily, we did get through it fairly well without too much disagreement, but I wouldn’t call it easy!

I am still working through a lot of this paperwork and I find myself asking am I good enough?  Is my husband good enough?  Is my marriage good enough?  Is our house safe enough?  Are our finances good enough?  Is “good enough” good enough?  Now, instead of assuming that we are like everyone else, I am picturing these perfect-beyond-belief people who are applying to this agency.  I am imagining that next to them our flaws look ridiculously huge and there is no way that they will approve us.  Then, I think about my life from my old vantage point.  I realize that we have a happy, healthy, well-adjusted daughter as proof that, even with our flaws, we are able to provide a good home for another child.  I think that we will probably be approved and then I will move on to be neurotically worried about the next aspect of this process.

In my last post, I said that adoption gives me hope and allows me to take control of the situation back.  I still feel this, but it doesn’t mean that the process will be easy.  I didn’t write this post for sympathy or to have people reassure me that we are great parents or that we are “normal”.  I do still think that we have done pretty well as parents so far and I still feel pretty normal.  I wrote it to share the adoption experience.  I am sure there will be unbelievably hard aspects of this process and unbelievably amazing aspects.  I will try to give an accurate description of what it is like to adopt (for us).