A year ago today.
The minute and hour hands have ticked incessently and startlingly much too fast. Each tick sounds like a gong and as the sound echoes the months have fallen through my fingers. Where has the time gone?
There were days when it felt as though adoption would never be final and that these children would never know permanance. But then the clock strikes 12 and I am startled to find that a whole year passed through my fingers like sand.
A year ago today two families took a a train ride. A train that could have been powered solely on our antcipation. Anticipation of what would happen that day. For after train rides, ice skating, photo booths and christams cookies we went back to our friends, the Crow's, house for dinner and at the end of the evening we left James there. In one day something splintered off in my heart but not in painful way. It splintered off because it was God's purpose for him to leave our home, but that splintering off forever fused us to our friends.
I had been James's middle mom for a year and a half. I had known for some time that we were not James' forever family, that God had someone else in mind but I never loved him less because of this knowledge. I never invested in him less or didn't bother trying to teach him things. I loved him like my own and I longed for him to return that love. And now, one of my best friends would become his forever mother. We share a bond of "co-mothering", if you will, that is rare and precious like the pearls I wrote about last year.
Kayla and I stood in her kitchen both feeling overwhelming mixtures of emotions. We were both scared and knew that we had no clue how to do what we were about to do. One was welcoming in a teenager for the first night and preparing to be his forever mom. The other was saying goodbye, depositing the boys that she loved in someone else's arms and home knowing it was what God wanted but also knowing that loss is hard. And then Kayla gave me this:
One large white pearl and one small black pearl. If you don't know the significance of these, you can read about them here.
We stood, hugging, crying, shaking with joy-fear-love-gratitude and just plain, "Can you believe God did this?"
Not many people will know the hard things we went through with James for that year and a half, not many will know the progress he made. Not many will know how much we love him. Not many will know that I was his middle mom. And they don't have to. These moments are my pearls on a strand, they are rare and glorious treasures that mean so much to me even if they mean nothing to anyone else. They are a beautiful reminder of what God did, and is doing.
A year ago, hugging and crying in her kitchen we had no clue what the next year would hold. And now, a year later James is officially a Crow. And Phoenix is officially a Meredith. And even last night as all five families gathered for a Christmas dinner and the kids gift exchange, we looked down the road, knowing that we had no clue what the years would hold...but hoping we'd all still be able to do ,this things called parenting, together.
No comments:
Post a Comment