By now you’re thinking, “Gah! Will it ever end?” Sorry, dear readers. I’m not known for my brevity.
September 2013 – The first picture Nathan sent me from this trip was of the entire group of kids who live at Alex’s House.
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| Can you even stand the cuteness? |
I wept when it came up on my screen. I looked at those darling faces and longed to hug and kiss them. Nathan took an Auburn baseball cap to Renel and had the chance to spend time with him. Such an amazing thing considering the last time Nate saw him he was homeless and hungry standing on his parents’ grave. Who was this smiling, healthy child? Such a transformation.
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| That smile does funny things to my heart. |
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| War Eagle! |
On the fourth night of Nathan’s trip, I had put the kids in the bed and was escaping into Pinterest world. (Funny thing about Nate’s trips; the housework is greatly diminished and my free time after 8pm goes up! Probably in part because we exist off of pb&j and cereal while he’s gone.) My phone buzzed alerting me to a new text. I guessed it was Nate with his usual nightly report of the day. One solemn sentence stared at me from the phone:
I could bore you with the details that I didn’t believe that night, but long story short, a Haitian adoption was not going to happen.
On September 10 I began to grieve for the child I would never hold in my arms.
Starting that night and continuing through the fall, I went through every stage of grief. The shock that followed the text. In the weeks to come I hit denial, sure that there must be some way. All things are possible with God, right? I kept looking for a loophole, an exception. At one point after Nathan returned home he was explaining to me (again) the reasons it was not going to happen. I said, “I guess we will just have to move to Haiti!“. My heart clung to the desire for a Haitian child and refused to let go.
As the leaves turned colors and gently made their way to the ground, I slowly settled into acceptance. But with it came the questions. Had I heard God wrong? Adoption had been the catalyst for our move to Alabama. Were we out of God’s will? Did others think we were all talk with this adoption stuff? Just following the latest Christian trend?
I wrestled with how my life was going to look. Titus was off to kindergarten and with just one at home I had been expecting to throw myself into paperwork and home studies. What should I do with myself?
One day in late October I was going through a stack of papers. I came to the information packet Nathan had requested from DHR back in August containing the application for domestic adoption. I took one look at it, and promptly threw it in the trash. ” Us four and no more.” I thought.
I remember the anger and pain just seeing it brought to my heart. I still wanted my Haitian child, even though I had come to terms that I wouldn’t have him.
When I look back on that fall one thing stands out vividly in my mind; the silence surrounding the “A” word. Other than the first couple of weeks after Nathan returned from Haiti, we did not talk about adoption. At all. Period. This was a topic that had been so commonplace in our home, our children understood the concept by the time they were three. But for several months, it was an off limits topic.
Nathan tried to bring it up a few times, but bless him, it was a dead end conversation. He had no idea what I was struggling with. My grief was so internal, I had not even shared it with him. I held that hurt close to my heart. It was a secret place and I wasn’t ready to let anyone into it. Just me and the Lord wrestling it through
But He seemed strangely silent during that fall, too. Until early December.
When He nearly blasted my ears off.
*chuckle* I -can- stand the cuteness, because I cannot see the cuteness on http://www.justbethlawrence.com/answering-the-adoption-question-part-three/ 🙂 I’m afraid there are several broken images (and links). I’ll take your word for it though 🙂
GAH! Thank you for letting me know! I’ll work on getting that fixed.