Interrupted Adoption

*This post was originally written about a month ago but never got published.  You'll notice this specifically in the last paragraph.  I tried to edit it in light of our recent events but felt that it lost something in the process and returned it to how it was originally written.

Hey, there's two words that will tie any adoptive parent's stomach into knots!  It's something we're warned is often a possibility, but hope usually gets the best of us, and we choose to believe it couldn't happen to us.  The truth is that it is a real risk when entering into the adoption process that things will not go according to plan.  As confident as a birth mother may be in her adoption plan prior to delivery, once she hears those first cries and feels that soft delicate skin on her newborn baby things can change.

When that happens you drive home from the hospital with the empty car seat and the untouched diaper bag.  You make phone calls to the same people you'd been planning on calling already, only for an entirely different reason.  You quietly hide the evidence that you'd prepared to be living with an infant, and you close the door to the baby room.  You hope and pray that your nearly 3 year old doesn't notice that all the supplies you've been dragging out for the past 2 months have been put away again, and you thank the Lord you had the sense to not tell her more than you did.  You delete the pictures from your camera because you need no further reminders of the pain and disappointment you've just experienced.  You make merchandise returns to six different stores, grateful for the self-control that you had to not cut off the tags and wash things quite yet, but sick to your stomach every time a clerk asks why you're returning them.  You cry.  You get angry.  You get annoyed that it even happened.  You pray a lot.  And you muster up everything within you to return to life as you previously knew it and just move forward.

But life does go on.  You know that God has a child in mind for your family and it just wasn't that baby you met in the hospital.  You choose to trust that God had a purpose in connecting you to that birth mother even though it apparently wasn't adoption (and you accept not knowing what that plan was).  You pray for her.  You pray for that baby.  And you move forward.  In time God heals your wounded hearts, and the memory of that day no longer stings so badly.  Instead it somehow miraculously gives you hope, believing that God has an even greater plan for you to come.

And eventually, you become comfortable enough with this part of your story that you decide it's time to make yourself vulnerable and share it with others. 

Hi, I'm Melissa, and I experienced and interrupted adoption 6 months ago.

I share this story here not only so others can read it and hopefully be encouraged, but also for myself.

"But then I recall all you have done, O Lord; I remember your wonderful deeds of long ago.  They are constantly in my thoughts.  I cannot stop thinking about your mighty works.  O God, your ways are holy.  Is there any god as mighty as you?  You are the God of great wonders!  You demonstrate your awesome power among the nations."  Psalm 77:11-14 (NLT)

Tomorrow, or next week, or a year from now when I'm feeling discouraged or in the pit, I want to come back to this place and recall how God was faithful and brought us through this difficult time in our lives.  He used this experience to refine us; to make us better people more dependent on Him. Even as I write this post, we know that another interrupted adoption is still a very possible part of our future.  But I will not live in fear of it.  I will not let that possibility keep me from still pursuing adoption. I will recall how God brought us through it before and rest easy knowing that even if it happens again, my God will be there to walk us through it.