The New Adjective

In 2012, for our 20^th anniversary, I described you in the following way:

• ·  Strong
• ·  Committed
• ·  Logical
• ·  Very funny
• ·  Smart
• ·  Calming 
• ·  Generous

And so you have continued to be for the past ten years.  But they’ve been ten long years, the most difficult of our lives.  The challenges have been many and exhausting. God has strengthened our perseverance and honed our ability to forgive, every day. 

The adjective I would add to the list now is:  devoted.

You are devoted to my health and well-being.  You are devoted to the goals we have set for the growth of our children, even when it feels like we’ve failed every day. In other words, you are devoted to your vocation.  Devotion is love in action. You know the final goal, heaven, and you consciously work toward it for both yourself and our family, every day.

For 25 years you focused on the role of provider. In the last five you have become more and more attentive to the role of protector.  I appreciate everything you do to keep us prepared for whatever the future may bring.  I love it when you tell the boys that they need to learn to be my protectors.  That may be truer than we know someday.  I am grateful that you are teaching the boys to become virtuous, strong Catholic men and that you are showing our girls what to look for in a husband should they choose marriage as their vocation.  They all absorb more than you think.

There’s so much to do and so little time.  Let’s keep our eyes on the four balls that we juggle, every day.  Let’s keep fighting the good fight—because it is a fight that, with His help, we must win.

"Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith."  --Hebrews 12:1-2

I hope you enjoy this video of memories from the past ten years.  Look back at the first twenty here.

Counting Down

Our family needs a little levity right now, soooo:

Seven things I didn’t know about parenting a male toddler:

7.  Working hard to keep his language skills on track would result in a two-year-old who talks, at boy volume, all. the. time.

6.  Baby-proofing would include every surface in the house, no matter how high, because any item he can stand on would serve in his quest to reach that empty milk carton in the middle of the kitchen island.

Yes, he is balancing on one foot, and yes, he moved the full bottle across the room.

5.  My girls’ beloved Pooh Bear, kept in pristine condition for almost nine years, would eat yogurt.

4.  You must take what you think would be a normal food serving for a two-year-old and multiply it by…boy.

3.  After venturing forth into the toy car it would take less than 30 minutes to go from that first tentative push forward with his feet to doing high-speed donuts on the patio.

2.  He would work for high-fives.

1.  It would take me all day long to get absolutely nothing done!  But I love every minute :)

Initial Reactions: Life with Baby J

The adoption story of Baby J is still in progress.  Please continue to pray for our family.

Until then, a few observations about what it's been like to bring home an adopted infant.

First, the negatives, only because I want to end with the overwhelming positives that have been the norm.

I've been surprised by a few reactions I have received from people on the periphery of our family's life.  About three-fourths of the way through our adoption journey, I learned for the first time that there are actually people who are opposed to domestic infant adoption as a concept. They believe that birth mothers should in all instances, using extreme measures of support if necessary, keep their babies. There are actually websites filled with rants hostile to adoption. While I have never met such people, I have been caught off guard a few times by people's comments when they encounter me with my child for the first time.

Unfortunate reaction number one:  "I can't even imagine..." 

When coupled with a congratulations or a comment on the baby’s general cuteness, it’s not as perplexing.  But twice it’s been the stand-alone reaction. It's the trailing silence, the unfinished nature of the sentence that bothers me.  So my mind can't help but wander into the possible endings:

• A seven year gap between children? Well, it wasn't intentional.  The road's been long and painful.  We started out five years ago, back when the spacing would have been two and a half years.  Lost two children in my womb and two almost-adopted children along the way. So, where you see a gap, we see a journey filled with both tears and blessings.

• Adoption as a way to expand our family?  To be blunt, adoption is widely misunderstood. It is a life-giving alternative to abortion; he's a soul who we are blessed to be charged with forming.  Love him just like my own, because he is my own.  Which leads me to:

Strange reaction number two:  "Is he yours?"

This one turned out to be a trick question.  I answered yes, only to be hit with the following:  "He didn't come from you."  My questioner’s smug tone informed me that I was busted, caught in a half-truth.  I politely excused myself from further conversation.

Unexpected reaction number three:  "You got your boy."

Actually, we were open to either gender.  One of our two miscarried children and both failed adoptions were girls.  We felt called to parent more children.  In the end, God sent a son.  His plan, His timing.  All glory and honor to Him.

Open mouth, insert foot reaction number four:  When talking about the sleep deprivation typically experienced by parents of infants, "I bet when he wakes you up at 2 am you just think 'I'm too old for this.'"

No, I don't.  I just think I'm tired and my son needs to be fed, again.

Enough of that.  On to the positives.

Our extended families, friends, and parish and school communities-at-large have been so amazingly loving, supportive, and generous that many times it has moved me to tears.

A common question: "How is it starting over again?"

The whole truth:  I'm drowning in a joy I've felt only a few times in my life.  It's an indescribable gift that I am not worthy of.

What I generally say:  "It's great."

A surprisingly common question:  "Was it love at first sight?"

Well...

First off, when we met he was not mine to love.  No decisions had been made, no paperwork had been signed, no records had been reviewed.  He was not ours in any way.  We'd been given permission to enter his hospital room.  Period.

Within an hour of meeting him, the nurses asked me to feed him for the first time.  About 35 hours later, I was feeding him for the fifth time when a nurse came in and told me I was doing it wrong.  "You can't hold him all lovey-like."  (Try to imagine the southern accent.)   With a NICU preemie, a feeding is apparently supposed to be like a business transaction--get the most food into him in the least possible amount of time. (But God bless those nurses--they loved him at first sight!  His care was excellent; those nurses are truly good people.)  This particular well-meaning nurse took him from me and held him in her customary NICU upright position that prevents any close contact between feeder and eater.  She then tried to put the bottle in his mouth.  He protested quite loudly and continued to wail for about 90 seconds before the nurse handed him back, saying "I guess he already knows who his Mama is."

Even when we left the hospital with him legally in our custody four days later, he was not a whole lot closer to being ours. We would have to remain in the state with him, far from home, until a series of interstate legal and administrative requirements were met. Birthparent consents would not be final until the revocation period lapsed.  Having felt the pain of miscarriages and near-miss adoptions before, it was hard not to fear that something might go wrong again. That's why I didn't call myself "Mama" when I talked to him.  I didn't kiss his soft cheek until day 7.  I didn't whisper "I love you" until day 10.

So, while from the moment I laid eyes on our beautiful baby I had a powerful drive to protect him, I didn't feel the butterflies-in-the-stomach giddy kind of love that I think my questioners mean when they ask.  I do know that love for our son was manifest through our actions when, leaving our two young daughters behind with Grandma, we got on a plane headed for a baby in a NICU 1,700 miles away, a baby who was without a family over the Thanksgiving weekend, a baby with both known and unknowable health risks, a baby who might never be ours.

I guess our love in those early stages was somewhat vague, more of a pro-life leaning than a rock-solid emotional tie to the tiny person who was to become our son.  I can't say when exactly love as my questioners mean it first swept over my heart.  I can only say for certain that it has.  When I am with him it rarely occurs to me that he did not come from my body because he has been irrevocably imprinted on my soul.   He is a baby, I am his Mama.  He knows it, I know it, anyone who's seen us together knows it, and I'm quite certain God wills it.  Many thanks to my questioners for making me reflect on that one.

The Extra Day

I had wanted to give up.  I had begun to question the truth of what I had previously considered to be a very clear call to parent more children.  Was I making the whole thing up?  In continuing to pursue adoption, were we in danger of “forcing God’s will,” as I was told by one ambivalent priest?  I prayed to St. Jude because, for the first time, the whole journey had begun to feel like a lost cause. 

Even as we decided to take Baby Justin into our lives, knowing the many risks and not being certain of the joy it would bring, I continued to waiver.  Are we doing the right thing?  Will we be bringing too much suffering into the life of our family?  Is it fair to our girls to adopt a child who would need extra care when we’re, well, over the average age of new parents?

As I held him during those first days, enjoying all of the beautiful, fun moments of having a newborn, my doubts did begin to fade.   And then came December 11^th.  

Those who believe in coincidences can stop reading here.  Even for those who do not, I could never do justice in writing to the Power of that day.

Our stay in Alabama had already been several days longer than we had anticipated.  First, our social worker came down with the flu and could not travel for three days to obtain the needed signatures.  Then, some new information came up unexpectedly.  Another signature was needed, this time in a different state altogether, which would require retaining another attorney and social worker who would agree to squeeze our needs into their already busy schedules.  Eventually we deduced that December 12^th would be the earliest date we could possibly travel home, so we made plane reservations for that date. 

On the morning of December 10^th, our guardianship was officially approved by both AL and AZ and we were given permission to go home.  We decided to celebrate the next, extra day before we could travel back to AZ by visiting the town of Baby Justin’s birth.

December 11^th Begins

Baby Justin was born in Cullman, Alabama, about an hour’s ride from Birmingham.  The first sign that this trip would be special was literally a road sign:

 

I had created this blog for my family with the name "In Joyful Hope" in February 2012.

As soon as we exited the freeway in Cullman, we were immediately struck by the most prominent feature of the landscape:

Since we love old churches, we decided to do a drive by. 

Sacred Heart Parish

The image of the Sacred Heart has been meaningful in my life for many years and has been increasingly present in my life for the past few years. I’ve continually acquired images of and devotions to the Sacred Heart because it is a visible reminder of Christ’s love for all humanity.  Who doesn’t want more of that?

 

  

The prayer most often on my lips during our five year journey to add to our family, and especially during our agonizing two-week period of waiting for all of our adoption’s legal issues to play out, was simply “Thy will be done”—not because of any particular spiritual maturity on my part but rather because a creative priest suggested that I plant myself in front of the Blessed Sacrament and pray those four words exclusively, over and over again. As I continued to pray those four words over the course of several months, I gradually came to truly mean them, which did eventually lead to a greatly improved level of trust in God’s plan for the life of my family.

So my second surprise of the day was the parish sign:

Note the quote at the bottom of the sign.

Really, this would have been enough to confirm for me that our adoption of Baby Justin had His fingerprints all over it.  But, as I learned from a wise Bible Study leader in our parish, when God has His hand in a situation, He will not be outdone in His generosity. Her words:  “He wants to bless your socks off.”  And so the day went on.

The Grotto

After visiting the hospital where Baby Justin was born, we decided to check out a sight that we had seen advertised on a freeway sign just inside Cullman. 

The Ave Maria Grotto consists of miniatures carved in stone by a monk over the course of many years. Most of the carvings are of sacred Catholic buildings.

Miniature of St. Peter’s Square in Rome

Hillside of various miniatures

San Fernando Mission in CA—only a few blocks away from the house where Steve grew up.  We visited it as a family for the first time a few months before Baby Justin's birth.

And then, standing off by itself on the west side of the property, was the only full size statue of a Saint in the grotto: 

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini feast day:  November 13^th 

Baby Justin’s birthday:  November 13^th

Ave Maria Grotto is housed at St. Bernard Abbey.

Saint Bernard’s feast day: August 20^th  

My birthday:  August 20^th

The grotto was dedicated in 1934.  I love it that God plans ahead!

 Proverbs 3: 5-6 

During the time period in which we tried to have a child the old-fashioned way, I resigned from my volunteer accounting post at Maggie’s Place.  I felt the need to slow my life’s pace down in an attempt to lower my stress level.  As the months passed without a successful pregnancy and two failed adoptions, leaving Maggie’s Place was a move that I constantly second-guessed.  Maybe I had thwarted God’s plan for my life beyond small children. 

As a gift recognizing my time of service, my friend selected Proverbs 3: 5-6 as a bible verse to include on a keepsake wall hanging. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.  In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”

The gift shop at the grotto was large and fascinating to us.  We saw some name cards on a display and decided to look for Justin’s name.  Finding it literally took my breath away.

 

Coming Home

The final and most awe-striking confirmation occurred in the timing of our trip home, December 12^th, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  Coinciding with the loss of an adoption, I had begun to feel a strong devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe.  It seemed odd to me only because that appearance of Mary is one that I had never felt called to study.  Just a sampling of the images and information I acquired between June and November:

 

A piece of the real Tilma on display at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, California    

A votive candle I lit right next to the Tilma relic in July 2012 for the intention of a successful adoption  

Our Lady of Guadalupe feast day:  December 12^th

Our arrival home with Baby Justin:  December 12^th

The Broken Road

Despite the many difficulties on our long path to adoption, I am grateful for the many lessons about trust, grace, humility, and love that I learned along the way.  God blessed our journey with three children in Heaven, two living children missing from our lives but whom we will pray for always, and so many lessons I can’t yet begin to teach Baby Justin. I don’t know the plan for his life, but I do know that God intended him for our family from the beginning. I can only trust and give Him thanks every day.

 

Dear Justin,

I made this video for you to help you understand that you were adopted and to share with you our joy at your arrival into our family.  We love you so much!