How could a woman give her child away? It’s the elephant sitting in the room for many of my friends right now. Let’s just put it out in the open and talk about it candidly. I now know the difference between alone and lonely. Over the past few days I have felt alone. How is that even remotely possible? I have an amazing spouse by my side, Micah, my parents, my brother and all my friends beside me as I write this in the hospital. I have a brand new baby swaddled in her crib cooing. How could I possibly be alone? Lonely, for me, is a feeling of being abandoned. Alone, now, for me means I’m the only person who can feel the way I do right now about a woman who just handed a child freely, without conditions, to me. Tonight, I sat in this woman’s (let’s call her Rachel) room with tears draining down my face. Knowing she was supposed to be released from the hospital this morning, I asked why she was still here in the room across from our room this evening. “I felt I needed to be here with you, so I told them I wanted to stay another night,” she said with a big grin on her face. See, yesterday when she told me she was going home today, my tear ducts broke. I told her I simply wasn’t ready to let her go yet, and her leaving the hospital symbolized the end of this journey. You know, she has to leave to the hospital, so to attach that to the journey simply isn’t fair. We had to talk about it. She shared that my family had become the family she had often missed in her own family. That the healthiness and the nurturing just came so naturally when we’ve traveled this journey. It was the exact family she wanted her gift to be raised in. We shared that we both were expecting every horror scenario to happen over the past nine months. Overbearing adoptive dad. Emotional biomom. A man who only would run from any type of relationship beyond this process. A woman who would say, “I hate you” and cause ridiculous, attention-seeking drama. An ignoring jerk who would be on the same hospital hall and could care less about what Rachel had just done. A time bomb who would use a 7 lb human as a pawn to get last minute attention by threatening to change her mind. We laughed and sighed that every fear never happened. We rejoiced that we had created a family by choice that few have the opportunity to form. We talked about Esther walking across the graduation stage as we sat together smiling with pride. I shared of Esther’s wedding day and seeing Rachel sitting down front nodding that “we had did good.” Alone. Only she and I knew this journey. Only she and I knew the security of the joy. Only she and I knew the magic of her screaming, “Who’s holding my hand” as she bellowed in the delivery room in the joyful pain of delivering my daughter. Only she and I knew the moment of peace when she said, “Oh Brian, it’s you,” smile and started pushing again. Only she and I knew that we started this journey as two strangers entering a dark trail, ending it as an unconventional family on a glorious path. How could “this woman” give a child away? Rachel has a calling bigger than many of us will ever be able to understand. She has a journey to continue to become the woman she knows she will be one day. As she looked at me and explained, “Brian, I love Esther, but she never was mine. I know beyond any doubt that she is in the perfect family. I know this family will heal the circle of pain of my own family history. Giving this gift was absolutely the right thing to do,” my heart exploded in a way I can’t explain. I may be alone on this one thing, but my heart knows that Esther’s vessel has changed my path.
Posted on: Fri, 30 May 2014 01:14:15 +0000
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