Love and Loss {Part Four}

This four-part series on our failed adoption begins here

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The next few weeks were very hard.  Life had to go on, but I was changed.  I felt so defeated - like the reality of ever being a mom had been pushed back even further.  Again.  I was mad at myself for being naive and optimistic.  I was mad at "C" for changing her mind.  I was mad at God for taking me to a place I had never wanted to go.  I was just mad.  

I stayed home a lot.  I couldn't be around people.  People might be happy, and I wanted nothing to do with happy.  People might have children, and I definitely wanted nothing to do with children.  Kain and I fought constantly.  In my (and his, this was devastating to him too) state of depression we lashed out at one another.  I think that deep inside, we knew we were our own safe place.  Our marriage, built with a foundation on Jesus, could handle the shrapnel.  We could be harsh and we would survive.

I stopped praying.  Stopped cooking dinner.  Stopped cleaning the house.  Stopped caring about much of anything at all.  I packed up the baby clothes we had brought home.  I packed up the bottles.  I put his ultrasound pictures away in a box.  I tried everything to get him out of my mind.  But he was always there.  He's still there.  I still think about him and what he would be doing now.  The week of his due date was especially hard.  I kept thinking to myself, "I'm supposed to be at home right now rocking my new baby, instead here I am.  Hopeless"  

In the first few days, I found an article on failed adoption.  I read it about 100 times.  {Read it here}  It was exactly what I needed to hear.  This failed adoption wasn't our fault.  And "C" wasn't a malicious villain either.  She didn't handle the situation like I would have chosen, but I have to assume that she did the best with the resources she had.  I have to trust that we met "C" and her baby at that time for some reason.  I have to be confident that our omniscient God walked with us through this hard time to prepare us, or to teach us, or demonstrate his faithfulness.  

*****

Philippians 1:6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 1: 6-7 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

*****

Today I am doing well.  I still feel sad when I think about our baby boy, who wasn't really ours.  I still deeply long to see his face, to know he is healthy and loved.  But I also know that I owe it to our future children to move forward.  I can't let a failed adoption derail our plans forever.  I can't stay stuck in the mire and the pain.  Eventually Kain and I had to pick ourselves up, give each other a big hug and decide that it was time to keep moving. 

We finished our adoption paperwork, had our second meeting with our social worker, and should receive our final approved home study any day now!  We have selected an adoption agency and are preparing our  home, hearts, and finances for completing a domestic newborn adoption sometime soon.  

We recognize that on the road to growing our family, this may happen again.  That reality is hard to swallow, but it's a fact that we have to accept.   Adoptions fall through.  It's painful and devastating, but it's part of the story.  Our story so far has been rocky.  And although we made it through this tough chapter, our story doesn't yet have a happy ending.  One thing that we learned at the Together for Adoption Conference this year is that in the end, adoption makes everything sad become untrue.  Adoption has already and will continue to change our story.  Adoption will change our child's story.  I'm looking forward to sharing all of that with you.

My friend, if you are in a place anything like we were; a failed adoption, infertility, miscarriage, longing for a child that you'll never get to know -- I'm praying for you.  I know that there aren't words that take away the ache.  There aren't words that fill the gaping hole.  But there is hope.  Hope in a Savior who makes all things new (Revelation 21:5), hope in a peace from Him that passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7), and a hope that he knows your heart (Matthew 7:7, Psalm 139).  

Choose Hope.