I used to dream so big. My brother and I used to look through the JC Penny catalog (yes the real paper and glue catalog not online!!) and we would pick out what we wanted our lives to look like. We would pick our future spouse, our kids, the rooms in the house, the color of the walls ... down to every detail. My favorite was planning the nursery. I would usually choose to have twins or triplets and would pick matching yet different colors for their bedding etc. So .. as I typed that I cringed, because it sounds so dumb in retrospect. And so vain. But on some level it was also full of hope - hope that our lives would be full of all the biggest and best blessings our childish minds could contain.
Fast forward several years and my dreams started being shattered one by one. Almost exactly 6 months after we were married I stood broken and in shame as I whispered to my best friend and husband: "I don't know how to dream anymore."
When you are trying to adopt something weird happens (or is with me at least), you want to dream ... I mean you kind of have to dream to begin the process, but at the same time you are terrified of dreaming. Especially as has been in our case when you have lost babies you thought God was giving to you. As soon as you begin to dream it shatters, and you almost feel like even breathing a hopeful breath will break the magic of the dream and wake you up.
God has been showing me gently all my life I guess, but more lately, that HE is good even if our circumstances are not. And that being grateful for even the hard bits of life is what really knowing Him is all about.
Last night I thought; "I shouldn't let my heart have even the tiniest glimmer of hope" ...(after all only a couple of weeks ago an international situation we were decided to pursue was taken from us because of international adoption law changing and countries becoming harder to adopt from) but I also realized that maybe I would rather have the sigh of relief that dreaming brings even if the dream ends the way they always do. It's torture loving children you have never met, knowing you may never. But at the same time, how can I stop hoping? And how can I hope, when I know that if I ever am given my dream, someone else will be making an impossible decision? I feel like my hope for adoption means that I hope something very hard happens with someone else, and that makes me feel horrible! So, last night I let myself dream. And today I regret it, because I'm afraid of how it will feel when I wake up. But, I just keep trying to remind myself that I will be grateful and choose joy even when I have to wake up ... This is just the reality of where my heart is right now.
So for now, every love song I hear is my heart crying out to our babies ... One Day I've Fly Away
A Thousand Years say something
