Joy In The Journey

This is Part 3 of a series of posts meant to catch you up on the last two days of our adoption journey. If you have time, you might want start reading at "Begin at the Beginning" first. The whole story of our family's journey can be found by searching "adoption" in the upper left search bar. Enjoy the ride!

Okay, sorry for the interruption! I've been looking forward to this visit with my friend AS and her boys for some time now and I was so disappointed with myself that I couldn't pump out the story fast enough to finish up before she arrived. But I knew I still had to shower, clean the house up a bit and get dressed before entertaining company. And believe you me, that shower was a necessity! I got so excited talking about our story with my fellow Curves girls that I lost track of the time and worked out harder and longer than I really had time for! (I know, you are all shocked that I would get carried away talking . . . of all things!) (And truthfully, some of you are probably shocked that I work! It's okay, I am too most days.)

So where were we? Oh yes, driving to the park. So the park was fun - except for the kid who puked on the top step of the huge landing to the ginormous tube slides. That was gross. But it was fun to share brief details with the gals who showed up and I could feel myself getting excited about the possibilities and enjoying the idea of this little girl. We headed home and I headed for the couch. The less than four hours of sleep while worrying and fretting was catching up to me. I got up from my nap to find a return email from my wonderful, straight-talking friend who also has a special needs daughter. The whole email was JUST what I needed to hear. Everything she said, point for point, had me laughing and crying and seeing the foolishness of all I had dumped on her earlier that morning. The huge take-away though, was that she lovingly reprimanded me for not letting myself look at this little doll's pictures. Here's an excerpt from what she said to me:

I think that you should look at her picture...soak it in. If you got a sonogram and the docs said that something wasn't just right, you wouldn't stop looking at that picture. You wouldn't close your eyes and forget she was your daughter until she was born and the reality of it smacked you in the face. You'd stare at that picture, talking to the Lord, asking him why your child has medical issues and is He sure you can handle them. You'd find peace in what you and your daughter have been handed through prayer and conversation with Him. You would soak her every nook and cranny in.... loving her for the child that she is....Yours, God's gift to you and your family.

See what I mean? JUST WHAT I NEEDED TO HEAR. And it gets better. Seriously, it just kept getting better. For the sake of time, I'll skip to the family dinner meeting. The in-between stuff is good, but these posts are entirely too long, even for a word-girl like me!

At dinner, we were discussing the file, sharing with the kids what we'd learned from the docs and such. At one point, I started feeling like the "luxury" of plenty of time to make up our minds was actually working against us. It was kind of enabling us to keep looking at her medical condition as if it was the sum total of what this decision would entail for our family. Something rose up in me and I stopped the conversation rather abruptly. I put The Boss on the spot and said, "If we were told right now that we had to decide by 9 a.m. tomorrow whether or not "B.N." was meant to be Aidan Hope Whitney, what would YOU say?" I wouldn't let him out of it and I wouldn't let the rest of the kids answer till he did. He pushed back a little bit, kind of half-heartedly, and then just welled up with tears. He said, "I'd say yes." I went around the whole table, and put each family member on the hot spot the same way. Without hesitation or additional commentary from Shaggy (which is HUGE, I must say!), each of us said "Yes." The joy was indescribable. We were rejoicing and laughing and a lightness entered our home that was palpable. The burden of fear and uncertainty had fled!

Later Tuesday night, I was able to steal away for a couple minutes to calm down and I called the director of the prayer ministry of our church. She let me share all we'd been going through and asked me a couple questions along the way. When I got to the part about the sonogram, she was totally silent. As I finished, she shared with me that the Lord had given her a similar word to share with me in response to my frantic and stressed morning email, using the same illustration. The very same one. I totally got goosebumps. It gets better yet. . .