Growth?

Last time, I was anxious, nervous, frenzied, sometimes hopeless, distracted, impatient, you get the idea; I let the worry and angst steal the hope and joy I should have felt as an expectant mother, though as a potential adoptive parent, you have no idea when (or if) you will ever truly realize that dream.  People look at you a little odd when you say you are expecting a baby, perhaps tomorrow or five years from next Tuesday, or never.  They don't understand, and I'm past the need to explain, because they still won't understand, until they've gone through it themselves.  I was in tears the night before we got 'the call' about our son, thinking it would never happen.  I was in tears again, at the hospital, right before we brought him home because obviously everything was going to fall through at the last minute.  It didn't and now I can only laugh at my former self and hope this time around I can approach the matter with a bit more sanity.  Of course, I have a huge advantage this time around, I do not have this unquenchable ache to become a mother (I am one) and I have survived this process once before and know it can be done.

More than that, I have learned a thing or two about faith and patience.  It is not whether all my hopes and dreams come true (exactly when I think they should) or that I am spared from grief and sorrow and great travail, rather it is being able to say, whatever happens, 'Thy will be done,' and being content therein.  Whatever happens, whether we are blessed with another child or not, I will wait in joy and hope, trusting that things will turn out as they should, rather than as I think they ought, for in the end, that is infinitely better than my flawed plans and aspirations.  So I will enjoy the days or the years of waiting that lie ahead, and try very hard not to physically hurt anyone for making insensitive, hurtful comments.  That is one of the trials of being an adoptive parent: people say the strangest things with the best of intentions.  But as I have grown so much since our last attempt, obviously this will no longer be an issue, I can just smile and nod and wonder what they were thinking…really!…?