An update on Natasha

My ward Natasha and her parents have amicably agreed that it's best for everybody if Natasha doesn't live in the Browns' home, for various reasons (and please don't presume that just because I'm not spelling them out, there are dark secrets being kept -- I like and respect everybody involved and am just sorry that the situation isn't right). So there is now the question of where Natasha, who will turn eighteen in December, will live for the next two years, as she finishes high school.


Natasha, who objects to having her picture taken and therefore refuses to flash her devastating smile in the direction of a camera, almost smiling in spite of herself

Now, for the time being she's happy in our house, and we're happy to have her. She's been with us for a couple of months now and our house is a happier house with her than it was without her. That doesn't necessarily mean we're the family she needs to spend the next two years living with, but it does mean that we have a luxury one doesn't usually see in disrupted adoptions: we don't have to rush her into another family that might not be any better a fit than the first one. We're pretty wary about rushing any such decision, because we know all about the phenomenon of serial adoptions -- our friend Laura has an adopted daughter who was adopted seven times before she found her way into Laura's home. Wherever Natasha goes next, we want to make sure that it's exactly the right place for her; and since she's okay where she is for now, we can afford to take our time over the decision. And that's best for the family, too; you don't want another nice family to go through the stress and emotional upheaval that the Browns have had to work through -- for they love Natasha very much, and this was not at all an easy decision for them.

At any rate, we now have the job of figuring out where Natasha will live for the next couple of years. We've talked to the Browns about what they think Natasha needs, and of course we now have a couple of months' observation of our own. So let me describe the kind of family we're looking for (you can take for granted the obvious qualities like loving, caring, etc.):

1. Natasha very much needs to be in a home with older children, ideally a girl her age (her grade, which next year will be junion in high school, would do) or older, both to have somebody her age to talk to and also to help her navigate the complicated social and educational currents of American high school.

2. The Browns would very much like for Natasha to be in a household with quite a bit of organizational structure, because a problem they and Natasha struggled with was Natasha's difficulty in things like remembering where she was supposed to be and when, and making sure she actually got there -- basically, just being able to rely on Natasha to fulfill the family responsibilities she needed to fill. You can call this irresponsibility or unreliability; you can (if you're trying to find a euphemism so as not to hurt the feelings of people such as, um, myself) call it absent-mindedness; but at any rate, America is not a society that celebrates or rewards economically irresponsibility or a lack of organizational skills, and the Browns would like to see Natasha in a family that can help her develop those skills. (In other respects we Pierces have found Natasha to be at least as mature as are most other sophomores in high school.)

3. The Browns very much want to be able to stay a part of Natasha's life -- for one thing, Natasha's grandparents have fallen very hard for her indeed. I'm not saying that a family from Juneau would be automatically disqualified, you understand; I'm talking much more about attitude.

4. Natasha has a couple of minor medical issues that have required the service of a specialist, and the Browns have also had her under the care of a therapist. I wouldn't want to overstate this -- we haven't been taking her back to Austin for weekly therapy sessions and I can't overstate how well she has handled herself since moving into our house -- but she was after all the victim of some pretty horrific physical abuse before the government took her away from her father, and I can imagine that one could well think therapy would possibly be very good for her and would be most unlikely to do any harm.

Now, obviously, families that have at least one daughter who is a junior or senior in high school...who are (unlike myself) good at organization and good at teaching those skills to young persons who are (like myself) weak in that area...who are comfortable with taking on responsibility for a young lady who was raised in the former Soviet Union by a violently abusive father and subsequently by an orphanage with four hundred other kids and who has failed to fit in to one adoptive home already (but who, I emphasize very strongly indeed after two months of sharing a home with her, is against all odds a delightful and charming and intelligent young lady)...who are interested in taking into their home a girl who is only a few months shy of her eighteenth birthday...okay, we know families like that aren't exactly dropping off of trees.

But (a) this is a really, really special young lady, and (b) you just don't ever know what God has in mind.

So I'm posting this on the blog, and we'll post something similar on various international adoption lists, and we'll just see what comes of it. And in the meantime, Natasha is happy and we're happy and we'll be fine until God decides to do something different.

Though, as you can imagine, we'd be grateful for any prayers you might be willing to take time to offer on our and Natasha's and the Browns' behalf.