See I wanted to write about so many things, wanted to give updates about adoption, pour my heart out about things happening, about life.... but I was afraid. We've had a rough year... and adoption is hard. You give adoption everything you have and more, and it takes and takes from you even when you're certain it couldn't take one more thing. I knew this adoption was never in our hands, that we had to surrender it to God... but I was so afraid something I would say would screw something up... and someone, somewhere would use my words against me and twist them to wreak havoc in our adoption. It may sound silly... and maybe it was, but adoption is millions of pieces falling into perfect places and I didn't want my words to create a gust that could scatter crucial pieces out of place. So silent I stayed, but the fire burned. Writing clears the mind and soul for me...
So we're here, two and a half weeks home with our beautiful Stella Raine, and these days since coming home have been filled with lots of emotion. It's so hard to describe to people what is so hard about adoption... and it's ok, I think. No one will ever know unless they walk through it, and even then, each family, each child, each history is so different that it's impossible to ever really know what it's like to be in someone else shoes.
I've shed so many tears over things that wouldn't cross the minds of most people. I've wept tears of joy that my child is now home while simultaneously weeping tears of sorrow that she will never know her birth mother. Adoption can be ever so beautiful, but every time, it is born out of tragedy. A child has had to suffer such a great loss, whatever his or her story may be, to be then given a new family through adoption. There cannot be the deep, raw, hard beauty of adoption, without first having unimaginable pain and suffering. Beauty and Pain.
We weren't home more then 12 hours on US soil when my phone started to beep in the middle of the night from friends in Uganda. A man, an extremely good, kind, generous, great man who had played such a huge role in saving our daughters life, had passed away in Uganda. I can't even begin to tell you how much he meant to us. How I had dreamed of one day bringing her back to meet with him, so he could see the baby girl he helped save, and she could ask him all the questions that I know she'll one day have... pain.
We've witnessed relationships bloom with Stella and her three new brothers. The very first night, they all ran around the house showing Stella how her new home was. They wanted to show her where her new room was, where they would play together, and her new very own big girl bed. The next morning the boys all fought over who got to sit next to her at the breakfast table. Eli has fallen head over heals in love with his new sister. She is the first person he goes too when he comes home from school, and will spend his evenings playing with her, tickling her, and doing whatever she wants. That boy, my word, he has got the sweetest and kindest heart you will ever see, building a relationship with his new sister. Beauty.
We've watched relationships grow and change. But nothing grows and changes without it being hard. There is beauty in Stella slowly building trust with those around her. Love growing, slowly blooming. There is pain in seeing the scared, the doubt... there is pain in two year olds who quarrel with one another for the sheer sake that they don't want to share Mommy because neither think I have enough love for both or think I might be giving just a little bit more attention to the other. Beauty and pain.
Our life has been about beauty and pain since coming home. So much of both. There is mourning the loss of what should have been for this sweet little girl, and rejoicing that God makes things new out of pain. There is joy in siblings, brothers and a sister, and lots and lots of pain in it too. There is pain in the fits, the late nights, the sleep deprivation... and there is beauty in the laughter, and although only 5% of people will get it, but so much beauty in the crying. It's a fine balance, and I'm not sure if we're balancing it right.... but that's ok. It has to be ok. Because no matter what pain, there is a little girl who didn't have a family, who didn't have anyone to go to, who didn't have anyone to hold her, who didn't know what a kiss was, and who didn't cry over scraped knees when I first met her, who now falls into my shoulder in tears over the ouches, gives sloppy wet kisses, and has a family who loves her dearly.
Beauty and pain... we'll take them both, we have too for healing, just as long as we're together.
