I haven't blogged in a while. I'm sure that all my readers are long gone, but, I'm ready to go back and sift through the last 6 months, if only for myself, and record what has been one of the hardest, strangest, loneliest, most beautiful, seasons of my whole life. I'm ready to write this little chapter down, and begin celebrating, here, online what God is doing in me and in my family.
I wasn't ready before now. My heart was hard. I was hurt. And while I wasn't angry at God, distrust had crept in and I was keeping Him at an ever growing distance. So, I did not want to write in my sorrow and dishonor God, nor did I want to pretend I was resting in the goodness of God when in fact I was toiling in self-preservation and isolation and numbness.
But...I'm ready now. The Creator of all things has been knitting back together the torn pieces of my heart. He has been patient with my grief. He has haunted me with His presence despite my rejection, and as if He wasn't offering me everything already...well, let's just say...He gives joy in excess and I can only imagine that He laughs at my disbelief, as a father laughs at his children on Christmas morning when, with eyes like saucers they behold the great absurdity of their father's generosity. The Lord is getting a good chuckle out of me, I assure you.
I'm gonna post our story in chapter chunks. It's too overwhelming to get it all in one post. So...here we go...
Chapter One: February & March 2, 2012
You may remember that we, like headless chickens, frantically got our adoption stuff in order back in December. (To jog your memory go here.) After the dust settled from all that, January and February were fairly normal (I think), and we were just waiting for our profile to be seen by birth-moms. Well, sure enough, towards the end of February our profile was given to a birth-mom and to our great delight and amazement she chose us to be the parents of her baby. It was crazy! It was happening SO much faster that I imagined it would. Suddenly, this nice idea that had been all theory and rosy expectation was real and had a due date and a mom and a family attached that will hurt because of this decision. And while I couldn't help but feel excited that my prayers were being answered, a healthy dose of fear came with it. Here I got my first real taste of the seriousness of our decision and that my joy would come at someone else's cost.
So March 2, 2012...without a doubt THE SINGLE MOST CRAZY DAY OF MY WHOLE LIFE. Casey and I woke up that morning to some very unfortunate news, which I cannot share here, but it was a big blow on a day that was supposed to be a great one...it was the day we were to meet our birth-mom. After picking our jaws up off the floor at the unfortunate news, we put that momentarily aside, got ready for the day and prepared to meet the girl who would change our lives forever. Around 2pm, with wild, rabid butterflies in our stomachs we went to New Life Adoption Agency and met our birth-mom.
She, we'll call her Tina, was a delightful girl. Very young. Very pretty. Very pregnant. Her family was there with her, which I was happy to see...they were very supportive of her. (After walking through the adoption journey, Lord help the girls who walk that road alone! Seriously. It is unimaginable.) Anyways, our meeting went well. It seemed that Tina felt more confident in choosing us as her baby's adoptive family, and we couldn't help but adopt her into our hearts as well. She was a real person...that matters to God...not just a means to an end. Honestly, I wasn't really prepared to care about her so much, and thus, the emotional tug-of-war that is adoption grew significantly more violent. And there's not just 2 ends on this rope...this rope has an end in every direction. On one end there's the hope and excitement of a new baby. On another the hurt of not being able to enjoy the baby kicks and the ultrasounds and baby showers and all of that. On another end there's the fear of raising a baby that you didn't give birth to and doesn't look like you. On another there's the fear that the birth-mom will change her mind. And on yet another end...not wanting this baby to suffer any hurt over being adopted. I left that meeting, thrilled that it could not have gone better, but also a quite stunned at the difficult journey that the Lord had laid before us. But I believed that Lord had indeed brought us to adoption, to New Life, to Tina...so on we went...in faith.
But it was still March 2, 2012. The day wasn't over yet. We went home from our meeting and told friends and family that it couldn't have gone better and that things were looking good for us to have a new baby at the end of the month. Well, later that evening as Casey and I were on the couch, letting our reality soak in, Casey picked up on some suspicious symptoms...mainly that I was "late". But, I was thinking nothing of it. You see, every month for 4 1/2 years I'm either "late" or there's some other suspicious symptom that leads me to believe that I'm pregnant. And, without fail these "suspicious symptoms" always end up playing me for the fool, as I'm never actually pregnant, and I begin the whole fiasco again the next month. This particular month, I noticed them of course, but I refused to give into the dirty tricks my body plays on me..."I'm moving on! I said...putting all that behind me...focusing on adoption. The end. Well, my resolve weakened and curiosity got the best of us...as it always does, and in the wee hours of the morning, Casey ran to Walmart. He bought a test. I took the test. Positive.
Holy Bologna! (That's not what I said. I said something worse than that, but I'm keeping it clean here at The Beautiful Meantime.) I'm gonna save the emotional meltdown that proceeded this revelation for another post. But, let me just say...it wasn't pretty. There was snot and ugly crying...the kind where Casey says I look like Julia Roberts (which he doesn't mean as a compliment), and there was hyperventilating and panic and then maybe a little she-had-done-lost-her-mind-for-real crazy laughing. And there were multiple rounds of all of that. And at who-knows-what-o'clock I fell asleep.
March 2, 2012. I will never forget that day as long as I live.
