A letter to our Someday Babies

{I don't know where, or when, or how they will come to us - but I know that someday I want them to know without question how much they were loved and wanted today}

Dear, sweet, chosen, deeply loved Someday Babies,

Today I was listening to a CD your Papa made for our journey to find you - and the song is currently one that I am loving: "If you're tossing and you're turning and you just can't fall asleep, I'll sing a song beside you; and if you ever forget how much you really mean to me, every day I will remind you."(Bruno Mars)... And I don't know, precious ones, when you will come to us, or where you are right now, I don't know if you are sleeping, or awake and unable to sleep - I don't know if you are born, or not.  But, what I do know is that you are here inside my heart already, you mean so so much to me and your Papa -  and if it takes every day for the rest of my life, I will remind you of this truth.

I love you with abandon.  

I've abandoned the thought of anything else I have ever wanted in my life.  And I would gladly abandon so much more for you sweetheart: I would abandon where I want to live, I would abandon any job that I love, I would abandon sleep, I would abandon playing in the waves alone with your Papa any time I want, I would abandon my tidy living room, I would abandon spontaneous sushi dates, and oh my children ... I would abandon so much more.  

Babies, I feel you inside my heart, like a hundred butterflies both humbly gentle and demanding of attention at the same time.  Throughout every day I think of you a million and one times, and even the rare moments when I don't have a conscious thought of you - the feeling of you is always there.  And I love you.  Every moment I love you.  So tonight my Babies, I'll lay down to sleep, and I'll hold a pillow with arms that long to hold you, and I just wanted you to know that even when I am sleeping my love for you is very wide awake.  

"Forever the Hope of my Heart"

So, have you ever found a song that captures what your heart wants to say so well that you feel like you literally want to eat it?  Well, this one has been constant the past two days.  As we wait in life and try to not put hope in man - we want our hope, our future, our joy, our EVERYTHING to be in Him.  Excuse me while I go back to singing this super loud because all my co-workers have gone home and the rainy campus is GREAT for singing! ;)

Why live life from dream to dream ...

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