Having a moment...

Im having "a moment" over the fact that our 2 girl (or so we thought) guinea pigs just had babies together.
Who WOULDN'T be caught off guard by finding wee piggies in the cage, when I have been through Jr. High health class, and darn that Mr. Gardner for telling us that you need a boy and a girl with very particular bits and pieces to create a living being! Because these pigs are living proof that it's just not the case. (I suppose the other option could be that I plugged my ears during that *embarrassing* part of class, and Petco sold us the wrong gender. Whatev.)

Discovering that Miss Tasha was in fact a boy with very real boy pieces (ohmygoshgross), was one of the more horrifying moments in my life. Maybe it was thinking back to the hot pink barbie puffy vest he/she was often forced to wear by a certain 6-year-old girl, or the copious amounts of other barbie clothes he/she was shoved into, or the horror could just still be lingering from having that sweet gal at Critter Cabana show us how to tell the sex of our guinea pig- something by the way that I will never be able to erase from my poor, delicate mind. Excuse me while I dry heave one more time...
Either way, it hasn't changed the way we feel about him/her, because he/she is still our piggy and we love him/her.

(Oh Lordy- have I lost you yet??)

This whole gender confusion episode has had me thinking about all the weird/crazy/HARD things we do for our kiddos. (Finding a guinea pigs private parts for the sake of our children TOTALLY tops the "weird things" column in my parenting life book. And I pray to sweet baby Jesus that it doesn't get weirder than this- my prude little heart can't take it!!)

I'm thinking about specifically the HARD things parents do for their kiddos, or experience with them. I'm thinking of the friend that has a child who is allergic to everything under the sun, yet her faith remains unshaken. I'm thinking of the beautiful friend who is fighting for her girl with everything she has that was most recently diagnosed with autism and many food allergies. I'm thinking of the man I know that has to watch his daughter make life-altering poor choices in her adult life, but continues to love her through it.
It has me thinking about the hard stuff-not the guinea pig privates stuff- but the HARD stuff I've recently worked through with my own daughter, and what kind of HARD stuff I will encounter with our someday-soon son. I, a white-as-you-get woman, and John, a whiter-than-rice man, will be raising a black son, in a not-so-tolerant world. We will deal with hard hard stuff. We know this, and we are as ready as we will ever be for it. We know that there will be times that I'm going to want to beat the snot out of some kid that used a racial slur aimed toward my son. I know that there will be times, regardless of the unconditional love that we will have for him, that he will feel out of place, with a white mommy and daddy and two white sisters. We know this. We expect this.
The thing I adore about community, is that we are never EVER alone in the HARD stuff. I have full confidence in the fact that I could turn to nearly anyone in our beautiful, crazy village and be supported through that hard stuff. Adoption, and having children in general, is never a personal mission. It is something that can only be done when you are surrounded by people that genuinely love and care for you and are as excited about this new child as you are. You, my friends are a part of a crazy cool village. Get used to it. :)