Every New Beginning Comes From Some Other Beginning's End

Here we are. All of us. On the cusp of a new year. The New Year. (capital N, capital Y)

Some are so ready to kiss 2014 adios and plunge into a fresh start.

Others sit in this last day of the year and dread the new one.

My dad's best friend is going off of life support tomorrow. Celebrating tonight and welcoming tomorrow makes my heart literally ache.

I ache for my daddy. I ache for the family. I ache for myself, even though I am on the bottom of the list. Just another indicator of time marching on.

I have been very introspective today. There is a kind of beauty in life that can only be seen in the pain. It is in the pain that we get a glimpse of what life was meant to be. Joy without pain. That is how God made us to live, so when we experience the awfulness that sin has brought into the world, our hearts naturally yearn even more for the perfection we were created for.

I used to work at the hospital. I would run all over the place, from the ER to the ICU to the maternity ward and everywhere in between. Such a spectrum. Rejoicing and heartbreak, just a floor apart.

Once when I was pushing my cart around, I had a thought about how scary birth is for a baby. Everything that he has ever known…gone and changing. Warm and comfortable in his dark little world, until one day he starts not quite fitting how he used to. Somehow it isn't so comfortable anymore.

But it is all he knows.

And then pain! Squeezing, rhythmic. He doesn't know what is going on. Surely his life is ending. Everything he ever knew…gone.

Wrenched out and away from his entire world.

And then eyes open.

Light.

Love like he never even knew existed.

People who have been eagerly anticipating him. Holding him. Loving him. Rejoicing in his coming.

The end of one thing, but the beginning of an unimaginably better thing.

This will happen twice.

I will end this year sharing my favorite poem, like I did last year. A poem to live by:

To live content with small means;

To seek elegance rather than luxury,

and refinement rather than fashion;

To be worthy, not respectable;

and wealthy, not rich;

To study hard,

think quietly, 

talk gently, 

act frankly;

To listen to stars and birds,

To babes and sages, with open heart,

to bear all cheerfully,

do all bravely,

await occasions, 

hurry never.

...To let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious,

grow up through the common.

This is to be my symphony.

-Wm. Henry Channing

I wish you all a blessed New Year, full of love, adventure and becoming. May each of us live every moment to the fullest, seek God's guidance and when that isn't clear, seek wise friends. May we revel in the cold air and soak in the summer days. May we, each of us, hold one another dear and tight, so that when we are apart we can remember the feel of love. May we dance in the kitchen at least once a month to a song that is ridiculous and happy. May we have open hands and open hearts ready to receive the people and blessings that God sends our way. Amen.

The Other Mother

As time plods on in our home, thoughts of the whole "adoption" thing kind of dim because it stops being anything out of the ordinary and simply becomes…well, life.

Logically I know that Daniel came from another mother. He has been asking these questions lately. Questions that I am at a loss to answer. Partly because I, quite simply, don't know, and partly because what I do know isn't heartwarming. 

I don't know much. A name. A situation.

This used to bother me. I wanted answers. I wanted to know the "why's."

What God gave me was a dream. 

I was sitting in a small room, like an exam room at a doctor's office. I had Daniel in my lap. Across from me sat a beautiful woman. 

Golden hair. Blue eyes. Freckles. Healthy.

She seemed to almost radiate light.

In my dream, I wondered who she was and was filled with the knowledge that this was Daniel's biological mother.

My mind said "No" it isn't logical that she would have looked like this, given the information I have.

Then I was filled with warmth and love and I heard God say, "This is how I see her."

All the anger that I had toward her dissolved after the dream, back in January of this year.

The thing is, all parents want to protect their kids' stories. Especially adoptive parents who have an ounce of caring, because really, even in the most ideal adoptive situation, there is heartache and loss. Profound loss.

My son's story is nothing that I sit and flippantly talk about. Ever. It is sacred.

And yet, as time passes and the wrinkles start to smooth out, I can go days without thinking about him being adopted. Weeks without thinking about the yuck he came out of. 

The irony of reaching that point is now Daniel starts with the questions. And the speculations. And the fantastic stories.

Do I ignore it? Validate it? Lay the facts out, sparing no hurt?

The fact is there was a woman, someone who I have never, nor will ever meet, yet who's decisions have changed my life and to whom I am connected with until the day I die. And she is one big question mark. I can't help loving her and feeling compassion toward her. And thinking about what a cool kid she had and how it is sad that she lost out, for whatever reasons, on seeing him grow and develop.

And if the above is true for me, it is even more true for Daniel.