Gut Feelings

  

How do I feel in my gut?   Never realized what a really good question that is until this week...and something I needed to work through.  At approximately 12:00 on Tuesday, June 17th, we pray to become this long awaited baby girl’s forever family.

On Tuesday, May 27^th, I finally started to let my guard down…the one I had held up for so long.  The next day, we walked into the room to lay eyes on the precious baby girl we heard of 4 months prior and I had been waiting for, for many years.  Words can’t describe what that moment felt like.  We didn’t really know what she’d look like, if she’s have health problems or if we’d even feel drawn to her and her to us.  As soon as I touched her incredibly soft skin, and curls, tears flooded...  

   We had more visits; God put a supernatural love in our hearts for her as if she had always been ours.  Eliana does not normally "take" to strangers, showing clear signs of anxiety. But God moved miraculously in her little heart!  She let us hold her, feed her, and we have both had an opportunity to rock her to sleep. We have no photo of her but her beautifully perfect face, is sketched in our minds.  

As the weeks have gone on and I approach Tuesday, I also feel guilt and pain when I think about Eliana's foster family. For years I have loved children who I care for each week day for 10 hours at a time. But they have spent the last almost 5 months 24/7 going above and beyond to meet her every need. I could not imagine any child having a better foster family then Randi and Scott and their sons.  I admire them so deeply not just for their sacrificial giving spirits, and raising her to know God, but their push to help Eliana get to know us as quickly as possible. They will soon say goodbye yet they continue to give us so much support and count down the days with us to becoming her parents.  If all goes “well” on Tuesday, Randi and Scott, will put her in our arms, walk away and go to a home they can still smell her and see her things but no longer look into her eyes.  

I feel sadness over what her birthparents may go through now and the rest of their lives.  I have always had compassion for them even before I knew them and I have prayed for them continuously.  On Tuesday, July 17^th, approximately 9:30am, her birth parents are given one last opportunity to change their minds.  I can only imagine what the final days; final hours look like when a parent knows his/her rights will be terminated.  I’ve heard the pain of it can be as if a physical part of your body has been cut off. 

I have incredible gratitude to Eliana's birth parents for trusting us with their daughter, soon to be our daughter the rest of her life. I feel admiration, respect, an overflowing amount of thankfulness for Eliana's foster parents who helped make her little life in to the bright, sweet, energetic healthy little girl she is now.

All the while my gut has a hole in it, I feel slightly nauseous, I feel fear and as that in two days, I will experience a flood of anguish if we receive a call saying everything has fallen through.  My guard has been down so I could love this baby but I've not allowed 100% of myself to love, to accept, to dream.  

If my dream of Eliana comes true, that moment will be NO less great then when a baby is born and placed for the first time in her mom's arms. I've been told it is, in a way, an even greater love because of all the waiting and effort that has taken place.

My gut feels love, my gut feels PURE excitement and new mommy joy, my gut feels pain and guilt, my gut is slightly on edge until I can hold Eliana Amaria Ohlinger in my arms...forever.

The Clock Ticks

12 days 12 days 12 days!!!  Really? 12 days until she is home?!

Hard to put into words this last month, this last year, the last 12 years especially of longing to be a mom. Roller coaster of emotions needless to say.

I'm not going to begin with how we wanted to be parents but all I knew is I had to start writing before one more day escaped. So many thoughts swirl through my head that perhaps the best way is to get it all down on "paper".

 An old friend of  mine asked a very curious question that no one else has asked. How do I feel deep down, in my gut, about this whole process? As my husband Pete said, that is a loaded question. Yet I am glad she asked because that's exactly WHY I need to writing.

The first thing is the new admiration I have gained for adoption. My opinion of it was much like many others:it is a beautiful choice, it's a wonderful sacrificial thing to do and of course it's a good alternative when someone can't have biological children. These things helped me know that I couldn't get pregnant, Pete and I would easily choose adoption(later I saw there is nothing "easy" about it).  I miscarried a year after we were married, found out a couple years after that I would probably never conceive and after giving it some time and prayer we contacted a private agency for a consultation and a few months later started the process of adoption.

That's when the miracles started..miracles for which most I will have to save for another blog. But one of the biggest miracles is how God helped me see that adoption is not an "alternative" it is not "second best" it is not simply a "sacrificial thing to do".  He has helped me see that it is JUST as beautiful as having a biological child and it it's own category, something that can not be put in to words. I think we adopting parents can see how even more blessed we are and that we are thankful if we can only ever have one child because of everything we have been through, how long the wait has been, how high the financial cost has been. We understand that we did not "rescue" a child, but rather they rescued us. They made our eyes wide open to throwing off stereotypes, they helped us get out of our selfishness whether it's requiring we have child that looks just like us, or that is perfectly healthy, or that we have to have in a certain time frame(believe me I know, I'm hitting the big 4 0). We are forced to go through this journey with an abundance of sweat and tears and times of uncertainty, knowing that we may always be childless.  If we do become parents, we accept that he or she may never look like us and may come with the weight of the world on their shoulders.

After only knowing about her for a short time, my husband and I had let her go in February '14 when it seemed God had another plan for her almost one year old life.  We just presumed that we may become parents in a year or two. In March we asked the pastor and elders from our church and some friends to pray with and over us as I still longed to be a mom but didn't want to live with pain each day. We asked that God would either give emotionally healing, physical healing of my reproductive organs or that He would soon bring us a child to adopt.  That day and days to follow, I felt SUCH a peace and I felt He had answered our prayers by taking some of my pain and longing away.

That Friday(5 days after we had been prayed over) we got a call that she WAS available for adoption after all!!  REALLY GOD?!!  When I had let her go, here you brought her back and how I praise you!!  Things seemed to fly after that and next thing I know we were being called in to meet her for the first time with her foster parents. It would take pages to explain that first meeting and all the "God things" that took place in those moments. Her foster parents blew us away with their heart for God, the prayers they told us they had been praying for this little ones forever family for months, their immediate love for us. Then their was baby girl...so beautiful, so inquisitive, full of expressions. W were told she may not come to us due to the trauma she faced in the first 8 months of her life. But she did!! She sat on our laps, we hugged her, kissed her, gave her some of a bottle, touched her soft curly hair.  Her foster parents called us "mommy and daddy" to her and called her by her new name, Eliana(meaning "God has answered our prayer") Amaria(her first name now). Even now, as I look back the feelings of each moment in that hour and a half encounter I could never captured on paper. Now I can not fathom someone not adopting a child just based on him or her not having a family resemblance. For you see, if God has it meant to be, he will POUR love in to your heart for that child...a love that you have never known, a love that makes your head spin, a love that we know is supernatural, that we feel day in and day out and that is without Eliana having one drop of our blood in her.

We have seen her one other time since, having precious moments with her of silliness, fun, giggles, her kissing daddies picture and falling asleep in mommies arms.

We count down the hours till we can see her again(we do not have a picture) which will be Saturday night. Then we pray the next week speeds up!

There is still a chance that this will all fall apart on June 17th and we will lose our Eliana. If so the pain will be indescribable. Yet I know my God is SO amazing, and faithful and He WILL get us through. His plans are perfect.

So back to how I feel deep down in my gut?  Well ...that's for the next blog. ;)