Adopting

This weekend has brought back some strong memories.

This weekend three years ago left me completely devastated.  I had asked for a mountain to climb, and I’d been given one.  After the initial shock wore off, I found myself oscillating between amazement that I’d been given such an experience and total sorrow.  I did everything that year.  I wept and I laughed.  I feared and I trusted.  I ran away and I came home to stay.

The following three years, and every one that will come after, have been and will be shaped by that one experience and my choices afterward.

Now, three years later, I am amazed at where I am and what the Lord has given me.  In the past years, I have learned to want what He wants, to trust Him and to let go of the rest (even when it hurts).  I need to be writing these things again.  I find that often, when an experience is so personal, I sometimes stop writing on my blog for a while, because everything is just too close.  But I keep feeling prompted to write more, so that I can remember, and my children can remember.

So here we go.  Our newest journey is this: we’re adopting.  I can’t believe I haven’t written about it here yet. So much has happened these past months to change our family and to draw us closer than we’ve ever been.

I’m surprised by joy that this is our path.   I’m also floored by the ache and the sorrow of it all sometimes.  We’ve been going through everything that adoption entails for about ten months now, and we’re still searching and will continue to.  It’s hard to imagine that for many people, this difficult journey lasts for years.  It is the most humbling, challenging experience at times.  There are few journeys I have been on that have caused more fear, worry, and sadness.  But I know that it is also a journey that, in time, will lead to the greatest joy I’ve ever known.

A friend asked me the other day if I could change all of this and just get pregnant again, would I do it. My answer surprised me. I wouldn’t. Even right now, little one, when I ache for you and worry about where you are, and when I haven’t even held you yet. Because I know that I will give you everything I have and everything I am, but that there are parts of you that I cannot give you. Those things will come from your mom and they will be a part of who you are. I would never change those things about you, Love. I will cherish them.

I would never change my own journey, either, even remembering the pain I went through.  I used to beg for it to be reversed.  But if it had been, I would never know the depth of Christ’s love that I now know.  I wouldn’t trade anything.  Deeper pain leads to greater joy.

In the meantime, I will wait and hope and pray with all my heart. Though this journey is hard, I will gladly travel it to get to you.

So, sweet reader, if you know of anyone who is looking, please, oh please, send them our way.