adoption story [part 3]

I waited patiently for the Lord;

he inclined to me and heard my cry.

He drew me up from the pit of destruction,

out of the miry bog,

and set my feet upon a rock,

making my steps secure.

He put a new song in my mouth,

a song of praise to our God.

Many will see and fear,

and put their trust in the Lord.

PSALM 40:1-3

This story is our new song. 

I write these things so that you will see what the Lord has done. 

So, we waited.

And waited.

We were "active" with a couple different agencies at the same time, with the hopes that we would be exposed to more potential adoption situations. We were notified of several different situations over the months, and were given the opportunity to have our profile shown. A couple were not a good fit, and we declined to be shown. With the others, we threw our name in the hat and hoped and prayed that this one would be "our" baby! 

While we waited to hear back, my stomach would be in knots. Excited and hopeful, yet trying to not get attached to any particular situation. 

Yeah, right. Anyone who says they don't get attached is lying.

Each time we got the phone call saying, "I'm sorry, but they selected another family," it was hard. Really hard. After one or two times of that, I was ready to ask to not be notified when someone was viewing our profile. Just do it, and only tell us if we're chosen, please!

One day Tim and I were talking about how excruciating the "wait" had become. It was like being pregnant, but with no due date, and really no guarantee that it would ever result in a baby. Pretty awful, huh? Or at least that's how it felt. I told Tim, "I don't know why waiting is so hard! We knew we would have to wait! We were prepared to have to wait!"

Except we weren't. We thought we would have a baby in February. We thought our wait was over. We had set up the crib, painted the nursery, packed the diaper bag, bought the car seat, washed the bottles, all for a baby that never came home with us.

It was around this time that I decided to open up an Etsy shop called hope: handmade. I named the shop after Romans 15:13, a verse that I had recently been memorizing. I wanted to actively wait, and frankly, I needed something to fill my time with so I wouldn't sit around thinking about how things were going (or not going). The shop was the perfect creative outlet for me, and I had so much fun creating logos, designing products, shopping for fabric, marketing, and sewing. I decided to use the shop to raise money for our adoption, and figured if I made a couple hundred bucks I would be happy. The shop became very successful and I was soon busier then I had anticipated.

In the meantime, life went on. I failed a lot, but I fought every single day to choose hope over disappointment and despair. So far things had gone far from how we imagined... how could I have confidence that anything would change? 

This was not easy. This was not my idea of how things should go. But God does not make mistakes. Absolutely nothing will come into my life except through the direction, providence, or allowance of God. He was and is working all these things for my good. 

At the end of May, our profile was shown to a young woman who narrowed it down to us and one other family. She wanted to meet us! I was so hopeful. The next week, we found out she had chosen the other family. He was not meant to be our baby.

After that, I felt defeated. I felt like God had forgotten us. He had brought us this far, then left us high and dry. Why would He do that to us? Days later I saw a quotation on a friend's blog that spoke deeply to me, and I wrote it down and began carrying it around with me as a reminder. Little did I know how true this would become for us, and very, very soon.

Days later, in early June, I was at work and Irene, our receptionist, said she wanted to talk to me. Everyone should have an Irene in their life. Irene is a strong woman of prayer who loves God with all her heart, and when she speaks, you listen! We finally find a moment to talk, and she tells me that she had been praying all night about whether she should share something with me, something that had been on her heart since March, three months prior. She said she had been avoiding telling me because she did not want to do the wrong thing or rush anything, but she had been feeling such a strong prompting from God that it was time, and she should say something.

She tells me she has a good friend whose daughter is pregnant and they have decided to make an adoption plan for the baby. 

"It's a girl," she says. "She's biracial, and they want an open adoption. I didn't know if you and Tim were okay with that."

Are you serious? Of course! 

I emailed Irene a PDF of our profile book to pass on to her friend, and gave her permission to tell her about Tim and I and let them know that we were wanting to adopt. Past experience had taught me to not get my hopes up, to not assume anything, to not look forward to anything. There are no guarantees, we had learned. There's a fine line between guarding your heart and cynicism, and we had been walking it. 

My heart fully expected another no. 

This time, it was a yes. They wanted to meet us.