[DebbieJFSG]

Today I was looking for an old file on the computer and I found a file entitled "For Your Bar Mitzvah." I couldn't recall what it was. Opening it, I read the letter my husband and I wrote just over ten years ago after we took our son to the mikveh. We had the foresight that evening to write a letter to our son which detailed the events of the day (some I had forgotten! including the names of the two other Rabbis who formed the Beit Din with our Rabbi). In the letter we talked about why we had gone to the mikveh and what our hopes were for our son's JEWISH future. (There is a different letter filed away for the day he turns 18...one we wrote when he was born.) The letter made me cry - in a good way. The dreams we had for him ten plus years ago in terms of his Jewish upbringing and education are intact and we are moving forward with his Bar Mitzvah planning exactly the way we intended when we began this journey. It's very exciting (and it will be hard for me to keep the letter secret for another two years until we get to give it to him on the morning of his Bar Mitzvah).

I'm SO glad I wrote it all down then...

If any of you are reading this pre-adopt or early on, I strongly encourage you to take some time to do something similar. Think about what you want for your child in terms of his/her religious upbringing. Imagine yourselves in the future at the Bar/Bat Mitzvah. Write it down for posterity. (And then, unlike me, try not to forget you've written it!!!!)