Thoughts on being a Mother.....

I will never forget Mother's day of 2001. My grandmother, who raised me and my brother and sister, had died just a couple of months before, suddenly, from a massive heart attack. We were still trying to have a baby with no success and I was becoming more and more disheartened with each and every month of trying. I clearly remember sitting in church on that Sunday feeling particularly down in the dumps. The pastor of the church we were attending was doing the typical Mother's day type stuff, asking the oldest mother to stand, the youngest mother to stand....the newest mother to stand....anyone expecting to stand...all the mothers to stand....then he got "creative" and said for anyone that was going to spend time with their mother that day to stand....and before you knew it, it seemed I was the only person in the church still sitting. I remember fighting back tears, unsuccessfully and feeling like I just wanted to crawl in a hole somewhere....I felt like God had abandoned me and that my desire to have children was one prayer He was saying NO to. I remember that day as being one of the lowest in my life.

God was there, he made that day stand out in my memory so that I would also never forget the next Mother's day that was coming.

Very soon after that day while on an evening walk around our neighborhood, we happened to speak to a neighbor that we did not know down the street from our house. He was outside with his young daughter. We commented on how cute she was and a conversation began. He happened to ask if we had children and we told him no but we had been trying for a while. He shared that he and his wife had tried for over 15 years and had given up and decided they weren't meant to have kids. Then they had met a friend of a friend who was expecting and had asked them if they would consider adopting her baby. They were thrilled. She was at that time 4 years old and the light of their lives. He asked if we had considered adoption and we said we had but we were thinking to have one or two biological children and then maybe adopting our third child. He said that it was funny that we should run into him then because he had a co-worker who's sister was expecting a baby that she could not afford to parent. She already had two children and was a single mother and she just could not take care of another child. We agreed to meet with her and things did not work out but the door was then open to pursue adoption.

In September of that year, our actual first meeting was scheduled for 9/11, we started the process to adopt through an adoption agency. In March of 2002, we were chosen by a birth mother in Indiana to adopt the baby she was expecting. We were thrilled. It seemed as though God had worked this out from the beginning. The birth mother had found our adoption profile (a short letter to potential birth parents telling them about us) online and had contacted our agency and asked about us. Our caseworker told her that she did not think we would want to travel to Indiana to meet her but she mentioned it to me while making a routine phone call to check in with us. She explained that if we adopted out of state, we would have to travel there and possibly stay there for up to a month afterwards until we got permission to travel with the baby. She also explained that we would be bound by that state's adoption laws. She completely expected me to say NO THANKS. It caught my attention that she was in Indiana because we had an already planned trip to Indiana to stay with some family and for my husband to go to a conference. I asked in what part of IN did this girl live? She lived in the city that we were traveling to in April. She actually lived about 10 miles from my husband's aunt that we were visiting. We asked to schedule a conference call "meeting" with her. When this happened, it was obvious to all of us, there was a real connection between us. God had opened this door. We arranged to meet with her while we were visiting and connected even more. The caseworker in Indiana told us that their adoption laws were different but from the adoptive parents standpoint, they were better. The father's rights were terminated prior to the child being born if he did not step up and agreed to raise the child, which he did not. The birth mother's rights were terminated at the hospital from the moment she signed the release form (In our state, they still have almost a month to change their mind). We were excited. We came home and just 3 days later got the call that she was in labor. We left immediately for IN. and 11 hours later, we were holding our baby girl. God worked out all the details and just one week later, on Mother's day,
we were home and in church with our baby. That was also one of the most memorable days of my life.

God showed me that our ways are not His ways and our plans are not His plans. One year from one of the lowest days in my life, God provided one of the happiest days of my life. I have been blessed with two beautiful children now and some days have more MOTHERHOOD than I can handle. So now with tomorrow being another Mother's day, my mind goes back to this time with a deeper understanding of how God's plan is sometimes hard to see and understand but still wonderful.
Happy Mother's Day!