Part 3: The Wait

Part 3: The wait

One of the things that adoption books advise, is to share your desire to adopt with all your friends and family, so that they can help network for you. So we did just that. However, having all those people ask weekly if you heard any news can be quite frustrating.

Our wait was three years…. But I’m jumping the gun a little bit.

After the first couple months we began to look back fondly on the home study days. At least at that stage there was something to DO: paper work, classes, books, homework. There were tasks to accomplish towards our goal. Now there was nothing to do, except check our messages.

We had great support from our Life Group (what our church calls their small groups). Dave and Jessica were our life group leaders and every meeting they faithfully prayed for us and encouraged us. After awhile, I felt lame presenting the same prayer request time after time after time, but they always prayed without ceasing (yes the whole 3 years).

We continued to live and enjoy our lives. Work was going well. I felt like God helped me to understand my infertility patients on a whole new level, as I myself was going through this journey of waiting for a child. Over time it did became increasingly difficult to not get frustrated with patients who weren’t happy with their pregnancy or got disappointed in their baby’s gender. I wanted a child more than anything, there was nothing worse than listening to people complain about being pregnant.

We continued to cherish our time with Ryan. As he got older, his requests for a sibling became heartbreaking.

Our lives were tinged with a constant sense of uncertainty. As we would plan vacations, we would wonder, but what if we have a baby then? Holidays were challenging. That first Christmas we bought new stockings, with an extra blank one, for the future baby. After Christmas, I bought these really nice Christmas cards on sale, with the plan of sending them out next year with our family picture in them. I just knew we would have a new baby by then! I spent a lot of time, scripting in my mind how I thought our adoption journey would perfectly play out.

About a year into our process we matched with a birth mom. We were beyond ecstatic. After calling all our friends and family, we quickly set up the nursery and gathered up all our baby stuff. She was a month from delivery, so we didn’t have a lot of time. Everything was falling into place.

Hours before she delivered, we found out that because of a legal glitch involving the birthfather, it wasn’t going to happen. We were devastated. The loss was gut wrenching. It made no sense whatsoever. We mourned. If there was any doubt in my heart that I would be able to genuinely love a child that wasn’t from my uterus, it was completely dashed. I had already fallen in love with the idea of this child and my heart was utterly broken that he would not be ours.

As a step of faith, we left the nursery set up, and prayed that soon our child would be in our arms.

That May I got the privilege of delivering Jessica’s daughter Hope, who is a miracle baby as well . A few months later Jessica approached me with the idea for writing a pregnancy book. “Sure, why not?” I thought. We can at least do a proposal right? Seems like a good idea. I figured it would be a good distraction from the process.

A few months later, we met birth mom # 2. We were more guarded this time after our recent loss, but she seemed very sure of her decision to choose an adoptive plan for her baby. When she was about 5 months pregnant and began feeling the baby move however, she changed her mind and decided to parent. We were disappointed. However, I had not let myself get as attached this time and we had only told a handful of people.

It was getting hard not to become frustrated and impatient with the amount of time that had passed.

That Thanksgiving at church, I very specifically remember Nate and Sarah Sallie giving their testimony of their journey to have their second child. She talked about how God had told her to “Contend to be Content.” I knew as soon as she said that, it was a word for me, as well. I clung to it. It was NOT easy. I was not content. I wanted another child, like REAL bad. My job was to help other people have babies, it seemed cruel sometimes to always have that it my face. I so very much wanted to focus on the future baby, but I realized that I needed to focus more on my relationship with God and on being content with all the many blessing I already had. This was in no way going to be accomplished by my own efforts, but through His grace and mercy.

That fall we decided to put our house on the market, we were hoping to need a bigger house someday and thought we would take advantage of a buyer’s market.

We were about 2 years into the process, and it was about this point that people began to make lovely suggestions: “just go to China”, “get a second medical opinion” “try another agency”. Anytime we would pray about what we should do we continued to only feel at peace with domestic adoption. So we stayed the course.

Christmas was hard, seeing the blank stocking at the bottom of the pile, made me want to vomit. But, I didn’t. I contended to be content. I enjoyed every minute with the blessed family I did have.