He’s Ours!

It has taken me a full month to put this in writing here, but in my defense, it has been a whirlwind of a month if there has even been one!
Almost a month ago, I was having a perfectly normal fall day at the play place of the mall with a friend and her girls. I was holding her sleeping baby when our social worker called to tell us that they had baby for us. I was so stunned, I couldn’t remember how I was supposed to behave. Honestly, we’ve waited a very long time, and there was a part of me that had rejected the idea that this moment might ever come. I had given away all of our baby stuff, repurposed the nursery, and moved on with life as if nothing was ever going to happened (which, personally, I needed to do for my emotional sanity).

The social worker told us Baby’s situation. He was in NICU at a local hospital, and because of some fairly serious health issues that we aren’t taking public, it was looking like he could remain in the hospital for up to 3 months. This was disheartening. It was a Friday, so she told us to take the weekend to think, pray, research, and decide if this was going to be the right fit for us. Husband and I found ourselves a little overwhelmed with the circumstances, and tried to gather whatever information we could on his situation. During the conversation with the pediatitrician though, I had what was one of the only times in my life when I feel like I have really heard God speak to me, clearly, audibly. Not like, a voice from the clouds or anything. Just a real whisper to my heart that was unquestionable. And He said to me the same thing that He spoke when I was praying about whether or not to pursue adoption many years before. “Trust me. Do you trust me?” It so overwhelmed the conversation between the doctor and I, that I could no longer hear what she was trying to say and I began to cry. I told her that I knew everything at that point that I needed to know. She actually laughed and told me that she believed I did too. In spite of our baby fighting difficult circumstances, so many other parts of his story were just so…perfectly placed. There are many details of his story and life so far that are just as we had hoped and prayed for, but never actually dreamed would all come together. Needless to say, we couldn’t wait until that Monday morning. Sunday night, I emailed our social worker, telling her that we absolutely wanted to adopt this baby, and how soon could we see him?!

As so began the longest week of our lives. Well. As of late.
We are no strangers to waiting. But when someone tells you that you now have a son, and it is only a matter of paperwork in order to meet him, you need to GET THE PAPERWORK DONE. God’s timing is perfect, though. This week in October was the week leading up to the 1st anniversary of my mother’s passing. Every day, I was remembering what we were doing that day, one year before as we waited for her to die. I had been dreading this week all year long. It was also leading up to our 1st son’s birthday. As we crept toward the end of the week, I realized that all of these events were going to collide, and that I would forever have them all in my memory, jumbled up together. B’s birthday, remembering the death of my mother, and meeting our new baby for the very first time. Wow. It was getting downright difficult to be sad about my mom, with all of these happy tears. Almost like it was on purpose.

That first meeting with our baby was pretty amazing. But we did leave in shock. It was a lot of information, trying to process what was going to happen with his health, what we might have to expect later, and trying to figure out how to plan. Plan…haha! Husband came out and said it, “I’m scared. This is scary.” It was scary. The prospect of being NICU parents, possibly having a sick baby, or maybe one with special needs, or just not knowing what to expect, it was all kind of scary. But, I inhaled, and I went back to what we knew. God had already steadied us. He had asked me to trust him, and I did. And I KNOW that when God calls you to walk into something, he will walk before you. “Some confirmation is nice, though, God,” I thought. I had thought it many times that day. I don’t know what I was expecting. Sky-writing?! But the next morning, when we woke up, my friend, Lis, send me this: “Do not be afraid or discouraged…for the battle is not yours, but God’s” 2 Chronicles 20:15. I showed it to Husband and we both beamed. Of COURSE! What are we so scared of? All we have to do is our job, and God will do His.

And boy, has God done it!

Our boy will not need 3 months in the hospital. It is looking like he will be released early next week. This is just nothing short of miraculous.

The house, the baby, the miraculous healing. It’s all too much. A friend saw me the other day and made raining motions with her hands and said, “The blessings are just raining down on you! How are you not skipping everywhere!” And I am pretty darn happy. But, let’s not forget the clouds that formed, for years, lest I become proud. Just look back in this blog. I’ll come out and say that the last 3 years or so have been downright miserable. We started trying to conceive 6 years ago and gave that up to pursue adoption about 3 years ago. There were a lot of times that I had to bite my tongue when even my dearest friends would announce their pregnancies. I know, it’s horrible. Part of me was genuinely happy, but that green-eyed monster, he can be horrible. I was convinced that everyone but me could get pregnant if her man just caught a good-enough sneezing attack!! I have asked God, many times, if it is truly necessary for me to endure SO MUCH pain to become the woman, mother, wife that he needs me to be? Clearly, the answer was yes. But, I was never forgotten. In fact, those years of emotional and physical pain have caused me to become so weak on my own that I have had no choice but to lean way into to the strength of my Heavenly Father. I drew my strength from Him all that time and now I know him intimately, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. Anything. He is so faithful and He always does what He says He’ll do. Does life still suck sometimes? Yup. But that heavenly perspective, it is life-changing.

God had a LOT of work to do on my heart, way back then, years ago, to move me into the world of adoption. I was so worried that I couldn’t love the same. Silly, silly me. I laugh now, because the love is out of this world. It welled up in me when I held him and he was immediately my son. What an amazing, beautiful, incredible thing adoption is. To think that there was a time I mourned my fertility. If only I had known, then, the gift that I was being handed. The nurse, misguidedly (but with good intentions), said to us recently, “Thank you so much for being his parents.” No. He is the gift. He is wanted. We are the ones who are unspeakably grateful for this gift from God. We are the one’s saying Thank you. Thank you God, for our baby boy.