Considering Adoption

Lately I've really been wanting to get a kitten. I hear that if you are gone a lot, it is better to get two so they will keep each other company and won't tear up your furniture too much:) These thoughts of getting kitties has led to me considering adopting a child sometime in the next couple of years. Hope that doesn't sound too weird. Well it's not just that, but it's probably that I'm always asking, "what am I suppose to be doing with my life"? I still want to live a life that has meaning and I am sick and tired of being so self-focused. It gets really old after a while. Yes, when you are healing you have to focus on yourself, and I have found that my healing process may never end. So maybe that means that I can be doing other things in the mean time beside just focusing on myself. I can focus on others. I get afraid to tell anyone because I can just hear the comeback, that I'm trying to focus on someone else as a way of escaping the hard work of focusing on myself. No, I understand that I need to do some serious work and I'm not trying to abandon it, I'm just trying to think about my future.

I've always said I wanted to adopt, but I've just started doing some real research into the possibility. Am I eligible, what is the process, how can I prepare for such a life-changing/altering decision? Do I really have what it takes to adopt a child, to raise a baby to grow healthily into an adult? I really want to know. Then of course there are tons of questions, one being, I would like to raise a child right from infancy, as soon as he/she is born if possible, but what about all the thousands of children out there that are past the infancy stage that need homes? People who want infants usually wait much longer than someone that will adopt an older child. I try to imagine what it would be like to raise a 5 year old, or a 11 year old? But then I don't think that I'm up for the job, it seems that I'd need to start at the beginning to find out what it takes to nurture a baby into a child. Does that make sense? Oh goodie, writing this is helping me to work this thought out. Plus, I know that an older child would have more issues that I would have to be able to help him/her work through. I feel a bit selfish admitting this, but it's true. There's some fears about raising an infant as well, but they're not as intimidating as the others.

The thought was to start with a kitty, then maybe a puppy, then a child as a way of starting to build the responsibility. It's a great way to think because then I start thinking about my most important resources, time and money. If I don't have the resources to raise a couple animals or more importantly afford to have a two-bedroom apartment, then I definitely won't be able to raise a child anytime soon. This will be a great place to start with my financial goals and finding out where I need to be to really be able to considering starting a family by myself. This is not a hasty decision that I'm going to make, but every decision has to start somewhere. For now I'll keep doing the research and pray and find out if this is really meant for me to do. If nothing else I should be able to put myself in a better position just by preparing, whether I actually go through with the decision to adopt in the future or not.