Only God

I think sometimes in my life when I know God is at work and I know that there's a "big" testimony coming down the bend I get so focused on the ending that I miss, brush past, or don't fully allow the "smaller" testimonies to sink in. Or I simply don't see them until the "big" ending has taken place...and I regret that. Often times if I would take a step back and look for the "smaller" workings that God is doing, I would realize that those "small" workings are actually "big" too. And by seeing and acknowledging each working that God is doing, I am then able to use those times as "remembering stones" for when the journey again, gets hard. I can look back and see where my heart was, at the beginning and, where my heart is now, at the somewhere-almost-maybe-getting-close-to-the-middle of this adoption adventure of ours.

Having conversations with friends over the past few weeks it's almost scary to me that I didn't realize how "big" my heart being where it is today is. That I actually might have brushed it off as "small" or just "one of those things" that happens during adoption.

I was talking last night at our boys back-to-school picnic with a mom friend who has children in 2 of my boys classes. She is an adoptive mom herself. Our conversation last night, for me, was so refreshing. We shared things with each other and cried together...it was one of those conversations that unless we had both been through it or in my case she is on the other side and I'm going through it, the conversation would not have been possible. The minutes we spent together, between answering kids, keeping an eye on kids, and a few other interruptions were so precious.

I share last nights conversation because after that the magnitude of where my heart is now, hit me.

Before we started our adoption journey, whenever the subject would come up, one of the biggest reasons/fears in my heart and mind for not adopting was that I wasn't sure I could love a child that hadn't grown inside of me. That is all I know. All of our children, I "knew" for a number of months before they were even born. Would I be able to love another child, "not of my flesh" the same way? If there was even the slightest possibility of that answer being, no, I would not adopt. I couldn't adopt that wouldn't be fair to the child.

As we began our journey because of how God had so changed my heart towards adoption, how we believed He was asking us to step out in faith, how we knew that we needed to trust Him with every part of this journey, that question or fear sort of faded a bit. It took a back seat to paperwork, physicals, evaluations, semi-intrusive interviews, education, and many other adoption related "to-dos".

Since moving forward with our adoption as the months have passed I would have a day here and there where I felt like someone was missing. Our daughter is missing. She's not here. If she has already been born, she's on the other side of the world. Our family is not complete right now. As the days have gone on, that feeling has become an ache, an ache in my heart. I don't know what she looks like, I don't know her name, but I'm her mother and I miss her.

I miss her?

How can I miss her? I've never met her. How can I miss her? I don't know what she looks like, I don't know her name.

Last month we were on vacation. It was wonderful! A full week of non-adoption related, well, anything. Our goal was to relax and have fun. And we did.

However, on our anniversary (July 25). I was walking in and out of shops, mostly browsing. E had taken the kids to go run around at a park since browsing in semi-pricy shops really isn't their thing. And paying for broken items I don't want isn't really my thing. :)
I was alone, able to walk leisurely through shops. I walked into one shop and it wasn't anything in particular, but all of a sudden I found myself in the middle of the store fighting, with all I had in me to keep myself from crying. I don't like crying in front of people, but there I was in the middle of this store with tears running down my face. Me, trying to wipe them away quickly, and get-it together. I managed to pull myself together enough to purchase something, but for the rest of the day I was never far from tears. That ache in my heart for the daughter we don't know yet, had gone from and ache, to a deep hurt. I'm not even sure how to describe it, except to say, that it hurt to not know who she is. It hurt to not have her with me. It hurt to not have her in my arms.

It hurt.

I've done so before, but I spent that day praying for her, asking God to protect her, to love on her, to let her know she's so very loved...

Loved? She's loved! We don't know her name. We don't know who she is. But she's loved, more then she could know!

My testimony right now is, Only God!

Only God could take one of my biggest concerns/questions/fears about adoption and silence it before we even know her name, before we even know her face, before she's even in our arms.

I know myself and I know there's no way I could work up these feeling by myself. I could try, and might even succeed, but they wouldn't last.

I could never work up an ache in my heart so deep that sometimes it's hard to breathe, I miss her so much. I can't, there's no way.

Only God.