Song for fish

You sat in the tub and glanced down at the fish you were singing to and I took in those eyelashes that are much too beautiful, too long, and too dark.  I took in your ten fingers and ten toes, your little finger nails shaped so perfectly, so entirely unlike mine.  The little muscles that are begining to form in your legs and your perfect round belly full of food and all I could think of was her, and does she know.

You looked up at me smiled and went back to your song for fish and I thought, the sound of you eagerly singing your song may be my favorite sound on earth.  I began to cry, this loss that is her's is gain for me and it's wonderful and horrible and beautiful and messy.  You were busy with your song so I allowed myself the thoughts, the pain, the tears.  She is missing all of this, all of it, and will she ever know that God created something beautiful in her body?

The only time she ever looked at your beautiful face was when it bore the evidence of something gone wrong, did she blame herself, does she still?  Oh, to find her and help her lay down her burden, to tell her who you really are.  How you charm people, how people meet you and are taken captive by the joy you carry around, handing out to those you pass.  That already I can't dream of who you will become, for the talents loom, an athlete, a lover of animals, a gentle spirit, a fixer, a helper.  You are a boy who is nothing gone wrong.

Will you find her someday and show her the boy God grew in her womb.  Will you find her and see what her eyelashes look like.  And look at her fingernails for me and see if there yours.  Tell her that when I look at the perfection in you I have always thought of her, her beauty and her pain.  I have always prayed that she would find healing, that she would find you.

My words are left unspoken, saved for a day you will better understand and I smile at your song for fish and begin to sing along, grateful for the beautiful mess.

Two years ago

Two years ago, I did one of the bravest things of my life, I took you from her arms, the only arms you had ever wanted, and told you you were mine.  I held you while you slept.  I held you while you screamed, while you fought with every bit of strength your body had to get away from me.  I prayed over you and I told you I loved you, and when I didn't know what else to do I cried too, and clung to the promises of my Father.  In the end, we had become mother and son, through the fire, we found love and an unbreakable bond.

We got on a plane the next day, you had finally fallen asleep, on this day long journey to my home, our home soon.  I laid my weary head back, closed my eyes, and began to listen to the music I brought along.  The words washed over me as if I had never heard them, they were bigger than before and when they sang of God's grace and mercy, His goodness, and His plans and I was undone.

I looked at you sleeping, memorizing the way you looked, and I worshiped Him.  The words were like good medicine, refreshing me and giving me the strength I would need for this journey, this day long plane ride and this lifetime of questions.  More words were sung, how He holds us in His hands, how big He is, how Holy is our God, and my soul spilled over, poured out tear by tear, the joy was too big to hold inside of me.  God.  Is.  So.  Good.

Two years later I doubt a day goes by that I don't look at you and am overcome with a need to worship.  God.  Is.  So.  Good.  And you my dear boy, are a gift.  I understand the way God loves me more since you came home to me, that He would pick me to raise you, a gift.  That this is the plan God had for me, a gift.

Last week you woke sleepy from your nap and I asked if I could hold you, you said yes and laid your head on my shoulder.  I stood there looking out the window at that gray day, slowly rocking from foot to foot, and He whispered to me, I am using you, this is a good work for me.  This, I asked, this is just love and everything good in my life, this is a good work for you?  Yes, my child, you are walking on the path I set you on.  The tears came again, just as they had two years ago, God. Is. So. Good.

Today, we will celebrate, that on the other side of pain and loss, is a love that makes us a family.  We will celebrate all the mess that is adoption, your birth mom choosing life and your foster mom choosing to love without regard for self.  That you are Korean, that you are American, that you are Jack, and that you are Hyeon-jun.  Most of all we will celebrate our God, that He is good, and He longs to give good gifts to His children.  You my baby boy, are a good, good gift.

You gave him life

Jack turns two this week and I've been thinking of you. The one person, besides Kyle, to whom this day is equally significant. The person who feels everything and nothing I feel on his birthdays. I wonder how you're doing. Do you have peace about your decision? Do you know anything about his life now?

I wish I had a picture of you. Somehow I feel if I just could see you I would be able to know you better, to understand how we came to be tied to each other in this inexpressible relationship of love and loss. I wish I could show it to Jack on his birthday and say, "This is your birth mom, she loves you and is thinking of you today". I will tell him those things, I just wish I had a picture too.

Are you beautiful? I know that you are. I see the little boy who carries part of you in him and he is the most beautiful little boy, he must have gotten part of that from you.

Or your name. I want to be able to give Jack part of you, to be able to tell him your story and I don't even know your name. If I could speak your name to him, I know there would be power in that, it would make you more real to him.

I couldn't love you for a long time, it was too hard, too scary. I realized as I was thinking of you this year that I've learned how to love you. I began to pray for you, for your family, for the little things I know, and I found the love I was looking for. I know I need to love you, if I am to teach him that's it's okay for him to love you he has to see it in me first.

You've given me the most amazing gift I've ever been given and I wish I could tell you that. I wish I could tell you how you changed my life, how much you didn't make a mistake, none of it, it was all part of God's good plan. Thank you. Thank you for giving my son life, you didn't have to, and I wouldn't be me without him.

Most of all I pray that you let the Lord love you, that you accept His gift of salvation, because I'm afraid that heaven is the only chance I will have to know you and I can't imagine not knowing the woman who gave me my son.

Happy Mother's day, to all of us

Do you see my new picture in my blog title.

That's Jack's foster Mom holding him. Do you see the way her hand is gripping his arm. Do you see the way he's looking up at her.

I am there, in fact I took the picture sitting across the table from them. At that moment, the moment the picture was snapped, it is clear who is the mother.

As far as his foster mom was concerned and as far as Jack was concerned, she was his Mommy in that moment.

I wanted to use that picture because when I look at it I see the beauty of adoption.

It's complicated, there are steps you have to go through, there are so many people involved, there are mixed emotions then and years down the road for many of the participants.

And yet, it's simple. Jack's mother gave birth to him, she loved him the best way she knew how and decided to place him with a family that she could not give him. Jack's next mother took him home from the hospital and cared for him, dealing with the stresses of feeding a baby with a cleft lip and palate, caring for him through surgery, loving him fully. Jack's final mother went to Korea to find her son, I watched as he cried for the mother that was now gone and I earned his trust and love, I allowed him to steal my heart, experiencing a new love I had never known.

We are all three his mother. When I grief for the mothers Jack has lost, no matter how hard I try, I cry for her. The one in the picture holding him like that. She was perhaps the bravest of us all, she loved Jack, her son for a brief moment, as much as she loved her children.

Happy Mother's day, to all the mothers, the ones who give birth to their children even when everyone else tells you that it would just be easier to "have it taken care of", to the mothers who bring children into their homes to raise as their own even though they know in the end they will experience heart break, and to the mothers who are bold enough to trust God when He nudges you down the path of adoption. The Lord will make your path straight before you and along the way you will find blessings you never dreamed of.

Pro-Life?

When thinking of adoption there is another hot topic that is forever linked, abortion. The church is of course against abortion, the murder of countless babies should grieve us, but I want to give you consider whether or not there is something we can do about it.

One of my spiritual heroes is Kim Schams. Kim came to speak to our Sunday School class one week on adoption and she told the story of how her non-profit agency came to exist. A number of years ago she was reading an editorial in the paper in regards to abortion. The writer said that Christians in fact are not as "pro-life" as they would like everyone to believe. The writer pointed out if you were able to put a stop to abortions there would be many things to suddenly deal with. She posed the question of, who would take these women to the OB appointments, who would purchase maternity clothes for them, who would teach them how to be a mother, who would counsel them if they chose adoption and had to live with the pain of that decision, and ultimately who would raise all those children? She ended it by saying that Christians in fact talk the talk but don't walk the walk and they are not willing to take care of all that needs to be done for a woman who chooses life over abortion. Well Kim became mad and determined, and she answered that writer's question with, Yes I will! And so, Aggieland Pregnany Outreach was born.

Unfortunately many more Christians do not become mad or determined when reading that writer's points, many more in fact realize that the writer is correct and are not willing to do anything to change that. You see one determined lady can only do so much. Every woman who chooses life needs a multitude of help, not just for nine months, but for 18 years as most of the women Aggieland Pregnancy counsels choose to parent their children by themselves. So you call yourself pro-life, so what are you going to do about it? Will you give financially to help others adopt or adopt a baby of your own? Will you spend time and resources to support agencies out their fighting for life like, Aggieland Pregnancy? Will you pray? Because the truth is the world is watching and they judge our Lord by our actions not by our picket signs.

The Grief

If you've read my previous post on money, you know that when it comes to adoption the money never caused me pause. But something else did, the grief. What if it made me too sad? What if adopting a child was too hard, the process, the waiting. What if, God forbid, the child I got was a bad apple (I mean after all it wouldn't have my great genes).

What about the months or years of my child's life that I will never be a part of? What about the fact that I will not get to feel this child grow inside of my body? What about how I will not get to nurse this precious baby and have that wonderful bond that I did with my first child? What about the trauma this child will have in his short life, losing the only mother/father he has ever known and being taken to a new country to start a new life?

Those are hard questions, and I would be selling you short if I didn't tell you that they are all part of coming to the decision of adoption. I don't really have the answers to the questions (not specific ones at least), but they are still important questions to ask, to give a voice to.

Grief is a process, eventually it becomes more of a sad memory than a constant pain, it is not always so big. So go through the process. Trust. Trust God in the journey He's placed you on, even if it doesn't make sense. Trust yourself that you are strong enough to go through the process. Trust your child that although someday the things that were hard for you will be hard for them, the unknowns, the what ifs, they will love you and you will love them.

Parenthood has rivers of grief running all through it. Perhaps the griefs of adoption are different, but grief would still have been there once you became a parent. Children have disabilities we didn't envision, they don't get the grades we think they should in school, they decide they "hate" us, they go to college at UT :) But if your signing up for this job of parenthood you had it coming. And in the end it was all worth it, the joy outweighs the grief, it was the time of your life, and you accomplished the most important job there is. The grief makes us stronger, it makes us cling to our God, and it makes the joy that much more special.