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.