All in a year...

I know it's been a month since we've updated our blog... thanks to Carrot Jello for not letting us forget! There is so much... it's really hard to know where to start. Maybe it's best to start from the beginning...

A year ago today we received our official letter in the mail from LDS Family Services, informing us that we had been approved to adopt. That was also the birthday of our blog. Adoption was the main purpose behind creating this blog, hoping we could get our information "out there" and find the birthmother of the child who was meant to join our family. So, happy 1st birthday, blog!

We've had quite a journey. Five years ago we started trying to have a family. We actually got pregnant within a couple of months of trying, but lost the baby soon after initially getting the exciting news. It was just enough time to get attached and make dreams for that little one. But, we healed and moved forward, sure that the wait wouldn't be long.

After passing the 2-year anniversary of our miscarriage, after no luck of getting pregnant again, I finally allowed myself to admit that we had a problem. Infertility. That started a year and a half of doctor visits, tests, procedures, referral to an infertility specialist, surgery, drugs, disappointment, discouragement. And, amidst all that we went through, there was no explainable reason why we couldn't conceive. We still had more options we could pursue with our infertility specialist, but the more we went to her the more we felt like we weren't in the right place. That's probably because the last visit we had with her she scoffed when we told her we were looking into adoption. Excuse me? Then, she told us we would never have a child, unless we went with IVF. Yeah, I had no desire to see her after that.

For about six months we had been talking about adoption, and finally decided to attend an adoption orientation meeting. We listened to birthmothers talk about their experiences placing their babies for adoption, we watched as two young families shared how they'd been recently blessed by the miracle of adoption. Basically it was five hours of free-flowing tears. As we left that meeting, Marc summed it up perfectly - "we leave doctor appointments feeling discouraged and sad... and then we leave this meeting feeling joy and excitement at the renewed hope of having a family."

The answer was so clear to us. We knew that we were meant to jump into adoption and we were so excited. We received all the paperwork and got it completed as fast as we could. We couldn't wait to be approved and start our search for our child.

So, May of last we year, we were approved. The day we got the letter in the mail was a day of joyful tears... we were one step closer to our dreams coming true. September came and all of a sudden we were contacted by three birthmothers. Our contact with one of them lasted for three months, and we thought our Christmas miracle was on its way. But, there turned out to be some complications with the situation and things didn't turn out like we hoped.

We were thrilled, though, when we were contacted by an amazing girl on New Year's Eve. Of all the contacts we had had, there was something very different about our feelings towards "B". There was an immediate connection, a feeling of recognition... like we already knew each other.

There are a few reasons why we haven't shared any of our experiences with "B" here, mostly because it has been so special to us and we wanted to save those details for our private journal, until the time was right. After only a few weeks of emailing back and forth, we spent a day with "B" and her family. We saw Juno at the theater with her and her Mom. It really felt like an out-of-body experience... it was such a special day we spent with her. We left, loving her even more. Everything went better than we ever could have hoped.

Because of the delicacy of her situation (beyond her control), there were some risks with us getting involved so early, which she was really open with us about. She was in her fourth month when she contacted us, so our pathways joined together pretty early on in her pregnancy. She has had some uphill battles to fight and we have really appreciated being next to her, witnessing her bravery, her faith, her determination to accomplish the Lord's will. She has won our admiration for life.

Since returning from Australia, to our surprise, the Lord has made some serious alterations to our plans. As a result, I've felt such a wide range of conflicting emotions - joy, sadness, wonder, confusion. But, overall, as we've watched the Lord make these changes from every direction, we have felt very much at peace that He is completely in control... AND He always has been. We make plans and we work towards fulfilling our dreams in any way we can, and then we learn that sometimes even those plans that we were so sure about aren't quite what we thought they would be. But, the Lord, in His great wisdom, knows exactly what He's doing. And, though we can't understand perfectly at this time the purpose and reason behind those plans, in the end the blessings He has in store for us are even greater than we could ever imagine.

I've reflected a lot lately on a quote from C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity:

God's work in our lives can be painful, but His ultimate goal is to transform us into something better. Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what he is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is that he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of — throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but he is building up a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself.

Well, I wasn't planning on making this a two-part post, but seeing as it's already getting so long, I think we'll finish this later. Plus, I think I need a little break... it's hard to put so many feelings down in words that won't ever adequately represent what's going on in those inner layers of the heart.

Please understand if it takes us a few more days to share the details of the rest of the story.