Before I do, I want to say that I am sharing all of this from my point of view. You will read in the blogs to come my thoughts and see my emotions through this part of the story. But mine are not the only ones you need to consider. There are thoughts and emotions and feelings and experiences that come from every other person involved. I do not know or pretend to know all that has taken place in their lives. All I can share is what I know from my own. You might find yourself at times being overly excited or very angry. All I ask is that if you choose to comment or post that you keep things positive. I am not passing judgement onto anyone, and I am asking you to not to do so either.
My marriage to Steve was one of the key events that put this ball of searching into motion. He takes a firm stance on the pro-life position which is something that I truly admire about him. How cool it was for me to find out while we were dating that he had even been a financial supporter of the very adoption agency that I was adopted out of - the Baptist Children's Home of Valparaiso, Indiana. Seriously, what are the chances of that?? At that point in my life, he was more curious about where I had come from than I was. He offered not long after we were married to help me find out whatever information I wanted to know about my birth parents. "We can hire a private detective," he would say. As I have mentioned before, I was very content with being adopted, so when I would respond saying that I really wasn't interested in searching, he wondered why. I had some very specific reasons. I had definitely thought about it before. I am going to lay them out for you so you can see how I believe God was truly guiding me along this path as He put those reasons to rest one by one in a very clear way.
- I was adopted in a closed adoption. I did not believe there was any way that I could get information that would help me locate my birth parents.
- I did not want to hurt my adoptive parents in any way. They are my real parents and have been here for me since I was a baby. They have journeyed with me through the good and the bad. I believed at that point in time to begin a search for my birth parents would be a slap in the face to them and would somehow say that they were not adequate enough in their job as parents.
- I did not want to hurt my birth mother by showing up unannounced after all these years. In the time that I was adopted, many girls were sent away to have their babies and it was never spoken of after that point. I did not know if she had remarried, had a new family of her own and if I were to appear if that would somehow interrupt that or make things difficult. I did not know if she had ever even spoken of me to anyone so I didn't want to somehow chance that I would ruin her life.
As you can see, my reasons were valid. The only problem was that they were focused on protecting other people's feelings and didn't directly address my own. I think that looking inside to the deeper feelings and questions I had about my adoption was something that I had never been really good at facing. But that was about to change.....
Less than a year from the time that Steve and I were married, we found out we were pregnant. There was much excitement about the new addition that would be added to our family. Our hopes were crushed when at 11 weeks, just a couple of weeks after our first anniversary, I lost the baby. There were many tears and much heartache. There were questions that followed as to whether or not something was physically wrong as we tried but were not getting pregnant again after the miscarriage. Looking back now, it really wasn't an incredible amount of time that we had been trying, but in the moment, it felt like forever. One year after we found out we were expecting the first time, we found out we were expecting again and Josiah Bryan was born on July 11, 2006. Oh the love that was felt for this sweet little baby with the big brown eyes. This love would be carried on to his sweet blue-eyed sister that was born just 21 months later. Zoe Elizabeth arrived on April 26, 2008. With a name that means "life" in Greek, she has been exactly that. Right after Zoe turned one, we found out we were expecting again for the fourth time. This pregnancy too ended in heartache as I miscarried at 10 weeks. The first time I miscarried it was a loss that came with questions as to whether I would ever be able to carry a child. This second time it was a loss that came with a heartache of knowing exactly what I would be missing out on since I had already carried two wonderful, beautiful children to full term.
I remember in the midst of that time, sitting my children down on the steps and taking this picture of them. Though my heart was broken, I knew how truly blessed we were to have these two rug rats. Even though the days were ended of us growing our family in number, I knew there was a huge task in front of us in helping these two grow in wisdom and knowledge.
When I look back to the heartache and loss of those two miscarriages, there are so many things that I don't understand. I wish there was no hurt in this world and that this amount of pain and heartache would never have to come upon a person. But it does. I believe that nothing happens without a purpose and if you take the time to see what God might be trying to teach you in those moments, despite the sadness, there is a plan for something good. God used those moments in my life to help me understand the feeling of loss. This was something that I would need in the future as I would try to put myself in the shoes of my birth mother who had given me away.
More on that coming up soon......
No comments:
Post a Comment