The road of adoption is not an easy one. Yet it is more beautiful than you can imagine.
I am placing hope in the fact that the beauty of what we have experienced is only the beginning. We are coming to realize that beauty does not only lie in appearances. It does not lie in the idyllic view of family that we have pictured for ourselves. It does not lie in the times of ease, or in the simple decisions.
True beauty is revealed when we are forced to pry our hands open. When we take a look at our lives and realize more of our faults. It is in the decisions that feel altogether too heavy to bear on our own, that in reality are only a fraction of what the birth mother is feeling. It is in the sorting through of emotions upon receiving the email letting us know that another family has been chosen.
There is true beauty in it all. The beauty of a mom who has chosen life. In a family who is learning to let go of their biases, judgments, or any notion of a self-made plan for their lives.
There is so much goodness. The goodness and the beauty collide with suffering, hurt, heartache and sacrifice. There is joy and there is disappointment. There is hope and there is caution. There are all of the juxtapositions that go along with being a follower of Christ. And none of it is easy.
Our agency has done everything right. We have been steady learners on this journey. We’ve been exposed to all of the emotions, and remained vulnerable to the elements due to our openness in bringing a new life into ours. Each and every situation we have been privileged to know about has caused us to evaluate ourselves- our thought processes and our life circumstances. Are we fully ready to become a biracial family? Can we responsibly say yes to this level of risk, medically? What aspects of our life need to change in order to confidently say, “yes, we feel that we can be good parents to this child for our entire lives”?
The beauty of knowing Jesus is that we don’t have to pull up our bootstraps and say that we are qualified on our own accord. We will NOT ultimately decide who our son or daughter will be. My husband has had a vision from the beginning of this process; a vision of open-handedness. This is not to say we have been able to say ‘yes’ to every single situation. We are determined to stand, with our hands open, before our God. Not reaching, as if to choose or dictate or control.
If we took all of the weight of these decisions upon ourselves, we would break. I have noticed that the days in which I feel completely overwhelmed are the days that I forget that image of open-handed waiting. When I forget to trust, things begin to unravel.
He has known since the beginning of time who we would get to parent, who we would care for and love for all of our days.
In times such as these, we can hold onto what we already know.
We know that this child has impacted us in ways that only God could orchestrate, long before we would ever bring them home. He or she is, in large part, what initially led us back to our hometown at exactly the right time so that we could be near to family when we all needed it most. He or she lit a spark in our hearts for growing our family in a different way, even before we knew whether or not we’d be able to have children of our own. And now, he or she has been the reason we’ve walked through all of the paperwork, all of the education, the interviews, countless conversations, and the prayers over information summaries that have come through our inbox.
We have now had many situations come and go that we genuinely believed could be our baby. There’s a heart quickening that happens every time I see an email from our social worker, a “could this be the one,” sort of feeling. With every situation, you learn about a real woman carrying a real baby. There is an immense respect for her, every single time, and there is the imagining. What would it be like for us to welcome that specific baby, to love them and know them all of our days?
There’s a curiosity, about what the birth mom’s life has been, and what it will be. A fear, on her behalf, a sadness, and emotions specific to her unique story. There are so many avenues for prayer as soon as you receive that summary in your inbox. Prayer for the baby’s health, as you now know specifics. Prayers about the mother’s situation; her family, her relationships, her living situation, her health.
Often we know about a situation for a week or more before we get word that the mom has made a decision. Whether the mom chooses to parent herself, or chooses another family, it still feels like a loss on our end, a rejection of sorts. This is when we revert back to our posture. We are here to receive. We have the privilege of holding our hands out, as a mother is choosing to make the greatest love-sacrifice she can possibly make. Ultimately we can pray that God will take care of that baby. That the best possible situation will come to pass for the birth mother and the child we have just spent a week thinking about almost every minute of every day.
It is not easy. Especially when you don’t get to know the rest of the story, when your connection to a mother and child ends abruptly, when all they ever knew of you was through some pictures in a book. There’s more, though. There always is. More happening in the spiritual realm than we could ever understand.
Right now, as we wait for answers, we will try to keep learning in the interim. We’ll try to keep trusting, asking for grace to remain in this posture of openness as we are being refined by our God. He knows us better than anyone else, loves us more than we can imagine, and has an intricate, beautiful, magnificent plan for the baby who will soon be in our arms.
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