When God Parted the Sea for Me. And Adoption, Part 2

(Note: if you haven’t read my last post, this is going to feel like a half of something)

So, I skipped blogging last week for two reasons: one, it was crazy busy, and two - even when there was time to write my brain was conflicted. Truth is, I’m a horrible writer if I TRY to write on purpose. The only way I can do a post is if I just write straight-up what I’m thinking, so if my brain is overwhelmed with August things, I can’t write. See, all of the sudden I have a middle-schooler. All of the sudden I have a new job. All of the sudden I feel mad about things I shouldn’t be mad about. Totally inconvenient as a blogger - I mean, my kids are finally sleeping, TIME TO WRITE - but no. What I was thinking last week was pretty much third grade, “it’s not fair” talk. So, I had to get it together and wait til this week. #truth

Working on it.

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(continued....)

...I didn’t plan for any contact with the son I gave away - although many birth moms who choose Open Adoption, do. Open Adoption simply means you get to make your own rules, and I just wanted letters and photos from his mom, until he was eighteen. Samuel was his name, and I needed the first time I met him to be when he was old enough to understand why I did what I did. Until that day came, I was content with just knowing what he looked like, and cried many a happy tear reading his Mom’s beautifully written letters explaining his passions and hobbies - which were so much like my own.

I knew all about where they lived and where he went to school - his mom and I even went out to dinner sometimes over the years. I looked up to her and her amazing faith and love for God - cause we’d talk about Him mostly. They also went to our church at the time, which was very large with multiple campuses and service times. I had never run into Samuel there, but my sisters and parents all had at some point - just a quick pass in the hallway or on the way out the door was the extent of it. Since I had lots of photos and had been in contact it wasn’t a huge deal: sometimes my family would even forget to tell me if they saw him because it was so “normal”. The irony of it all was that I was the only one that hadn’t run into him - which I figured was just coincidence. But when asked if that bothered me I genuinely said, “I don’t want to see him like that for the first time - just a pass in the hallway isn’t enough. I want it to be a meaningful, on-purpose thing.”

So, blog catch-up: for those who haven’t read my previous posts, my husband Mitch and I had just lost our third son, Oliver, to stillbirth. No cause was ever found for his death - his healthy heart simply stopped beating and he was born without life. So when I got pregnant again less than two months after that with our only daughter, it was a daily battle to wonder if death would happen all over again. We rented a fetal heart monitor to help with the anxiety, but the fear never left. Then, three months into that pregnancy, I found out our marriage was failing. Lies had surfaced that I couldn’t deal with (I’ll do a post on that someday - I’m just waiting to be brave enough). Going through the stillbirth had created a bond between Mitch and I initially, but the following months of hard-to-navigate grief pushed us apart. Mitch traveled all the time for work. I was a stay-at-home Mom with two other kids that needed me. We were going to counseling. I was trying hard to hold it all together, but honestly my heart was just, plain, defeated. I had even asked our Dr. to induce me at thirty-seven weeks - something that’s granted to many stillbirth moms - but he said No.

So this post is about a Wednesday night, in October, 2013, when I’m thirty-six weeks pregnant. On this day, I was especially frustrated because as she’s getting bigger and bigger there’s less room for her to move and kick - which means there’s more room for me to fear that she’s gone. But I’m in the car, away from my fetal heart monitor at home, because Mitch - who usually takes our then nine-year-old Josh to Wednesday night church - was too overloaded with work. So for the first time in six weeks, I had to drive him to church instead of staying home with our other Little, which was the normal routine.

I drop him off and decide to go to the nearby Target. No kicks still - it’s been hours I think, since I felt the last one. I did my random enthusiastic hopping routine on the way into Target to try to make her angry enough to “wake up”, and fight back via a kick to my bladder... but there’s nothing. I push my cart around for a bit, but I’m too distracted. Church still isn’t done for forty minutes, but I can’t stand Target right now. I abandon my empty cart, unable to fake errand-running anymore, and return to my car and head back towards the church.

This particular church is large, like I said, but the parking lot is even larger. And getting a front row spot during the beginning of Minnesota winter, on Wednesday night when everyone is there, is only something that happens if you’re “highly favored” - as the Christian jokes go. I usually never even tried finding one there - I’d see one in row five and think it was a steal and pull in fast. But I was all about full-on irritation and fear and anger and defeat, and WELL, WHY NOT: let’s go see what’s in the front row... *snarky tone*

And, by golly, there was an opening. Just a couple stalls down from the handicap parking spots, right against the sidewalk, I pulled into the best spot I’d ever had. “Highly favored, right here!” I laughed to myself.

I flicked off my lights, reclined my seat a bit, and turned on the mix CD I had with all my songs about trust and hope. That should help? I placed my hands over my belly, and just stared at the front windows of the church - floor to ceiling they were with all the busy bustle inside of people learning about God. As I sat there, I realized how abandoned and insignificant I felt to God. Oliver had died, my marriage was dying... I was utterly confused about it all and had no energy to fight anymore. No energy to just “trust for the best” at this point, I was too exhausted to hope now. I had already shut down to Mitch completely and just resigned to my “whatever” personality: ice-cold, dead to emotions, a “who gives a rip”- attitude. My life consisted of watching TV. Decorating my house. Throwing myself into hobbies that made me feel accomplished. I had retreated from any kind of vulnerability, whatsoever, after Mitch’s marriage confessions - I just didn’t know how to talk about that. So that was life: wake up, do it all over again, and again. Exist. Go to bed. Repeat. Repeat.

Ten minutes or so had gone by - I still had another twenty to go until church was over. I got bored of my attempt to find hope, and focused in on the scene in front of me: it was full-dark outside, but the glass exterior of the church before me was lit up like a TV screen, just fifteen feet from my front bumper. My parking stall happened to be perfectly centered in front of one of the children’s rooms - the two- or three-year-old one. There was at least twenty toddlers in there, running around all crazy like, with three adult-ish caretakers. I tried to find a little girl that looked like I imagined my yet unborn-daughter would, one with dark hair like me, and I did. I focused on that one, praying for hope and trust, praying my pregnancy would be okay. Praying I’d have a two year old like that someday...

But I kept getting distracted by one of the adult volunteers. A teenage boy.

First of all, what kind of teenage boy volunteers in the toddler room anyway? I didn’t have any brothers, but I assumed that most males would be complaining left and right about that. Or kind of hiding in the corner all awkward-like, maybe opening up a box of crayons for a kid, if anything. In all my church-nursery-volunteering years, I’d never seen a teenage boy do that job. But that wasn’t even the most surprising part - he was, actually, wildly enjoying it. He was picking the little girl up that I kept trailing around, and swinging her left and right, and laughing. He was all stylish like, wearing a t-shirt, but also a winter stocking-cap pulled down almost over his eyes that had one of those big pom-poms at the top. It had the name of some city on it, like a hockey hat, maybe (this IS Minnesota, after all), but it was the perfect accessory to his child-twirling ways - just bouncing around. He made me smile, and for a moment I forgot about my circumstances. I wanted my boys to be like that - full of joy and love for kids, volunteering without begrudging. I felt like I had gotten a little answer to prayer - seeing this boy inspired me to get out of my funk, to want to feel joy again, too.

But then, he came up to look at his reflection in the window, centered, fifteen feet from the front of my car. He took his hat off to readjust it, and...

I could see his face. I KNEW THAT FACE. The photographs I’d collected for fourteen years were looking back at me. Of course, he thought he was looking at his reflection, but it didn’t feel that way to me. He stayed there for another ten seconds, tilting his hat to the side with a grin, and then turning back to the kids again.

I was unknowingly holding my breath those whole ten seconds, so when he turned around and broke my gaze, I gasped and the sobs came out. My hands searched for my phone without looking, and I started recording video of it all - because no one would believe it, not even me. For the next ten minutes I watched what felt like a movie screen of his jubilant life, bounding around the room with these children, and cried so deeply and fully. While my eyes watched this movie play, my heart remembered the not so pretty movie of my teenage pregnancy; the pain and doubt and fear I had around that situation, and the intense joy my soul was experiencing now deeper than any I had ever known - it was indescribable. He was so beautifully made, and his heart was on his sleeve just like I had hoped. The church logo was printed on the window, and it was like God’s calling card - like NBC or CBS calling out their ownership in the lower right of the screen. This show I was watching, and this channel it was on: this is what God’s programming can do.

When it was finally time to go inside to pick up Josh, I went the long way around - avoiding that room. I wanted the next time I saw him to be a worthy sequel, not a mini-movie-trailer. Josh asked me why my my face was all red, so I told him I saw his half-brother today - we talked about him often over the years so the conversation in the car on the way home was a fun one. Full of God's love and hope. I had strength suddenly. I hadn’t given a single thought to my circumstances or my pregnancy or my marriage, or fear, or doubt, or pain since I’d seen his face in the window. We came in the house, Josh bounded upstairs to his room, and I met Mitch in the kitchen.

And I couldn’t hold my emotions back from him anymore - my stone-cold heart and “I’m not sharing life with you” attitude was destroyed by God’s amazing gift that night. His love made me come alive again. I spilled the whole story to him, complete with every vulnerable thought of self-pity, and “I feel abandoned by God”- mindset. Things I’d kept from Mitch all this time - the way God redeemed it broke down all my walls. I have since called it My Red Sea Moment; when I was a teen, I’d always say, “well, if God would just part the Red Sea in front of me, I’d trust in him too...” But this WAS my Red Sea: I never drove Josh to church; I was the only person who had never casually run into him; I never got a spot in the front row; I especially never sat in the parking lot early - I’m a late person, straight-up; I had no idea Samuel volunteered in the kids...

And I had no idea how much JOY he had.

It was all too much. My Red-Sea moment. God had done that, and I couldn’t deny it, and I couldn’t not love everything and everyone and all of the whole wide ugly world for twenty-four hours at least. All the pain and hurt I mentioned in my last post - all the shame and humiliation - I’d do it ten times over to re-live that movie of Samuel again, playing with those kids that night. God’s love is the only thing I want to live for, again and again.

It’s worth pushing through my weakness.

It’s worth pushing through my selfishsness.

It’s worth pushing through my fear.

God can fill your soul in a way that nothing else can. The darker your life, the more redemption will blow you over when you give Him the reigns. That moment when it all comes together, when you know God sees your every move and is planning a finale you could never have imagined...

That is the life, and the adventure, worth living.

#RedemptionWins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zulKcYItKIA