The gift of going through the process

Today is April 14, 2011 and that means it's Brian's birthday... thank you, Mary, for giving life to this beautiful person who means so much to me!   His light stretches far and wide, and I'm so glad to be inside of it!  To match that light, the weather was just about perfect today, with lots of sunshine and warmth.  Too bad we missed it.  We both had to work, then head into the city for an adoption meeting about PA and NJ law.  First, though, a very romantic, celebratory birthday dinner at a food court under construction.  Yum... Chic Filet!  We enjoyed a spectacular piece of the best, most moist chocolate cake compliments of Wegmans, too! 

The meeting tonight was very overwhelming.  Learning all of the in's and out's of adoption laws in PA and NJ is no easy task.  It's complicated.  It's stressful.  It's scary.  There's so many scenarios that could play out... if the birth father is known, if he's unknown, if he could be one of multiple men, if he's interested in parenting, if he's not, etc. There's the issues surrounding when the birth mother can sign consent and when she can't, what the window of opportunity is for her to change her mind, what if she's on the fence, etc.  Then there's tax issues, and health insurance issues, and just plain issues.  I had this moment during the seminar when I thought to myself... I change my mind.  I don't want to do this.  It's too scary and we're too vulnerable.  We're at the mercy of too many other people and not enough in control of our own destiny.  I want to turn back the hands of time and change history.  I want a simple experience of being pregnant and giving birth, so that the baby is ours from the get go.  It's not questionable, it's not challenged, and it certainly wont change.  I can't begin to imagine the experience of receiving that baby into our arms and our hearts, bringing him or her into our home, loving that baby fully and deeply, and then having to return that baby to birth parents.  It's a small, small possiblity that this would happen, but even a small chance feels like too big of a risk.  Our hearts are so incredibly breakable, and they are so hard to mend.  They are fragile.  Do we want to mess with this and risk breaking our hearts more than they already have been broken?  Of course, in reality the answer is yes.  This is one risk that is so worth taking, and in the end, our hearts will be more full than they've ever been.  The moments when we question this process are few and far between, but it wouldn't be right not to acknowledge them.  Doing that doesn't make them non existent.
This process... this journey...it's such a beautiful thing. And it feels so right.  In a way, it feels like an honor to be going through it, and I almost want everyone I know to experience it, too.  It feels like an honor for reasons I can't fully understand or describe.  It sort of feels like we're "chosen ones", both literally and figuratively.  We will be chosen, by the birthfamily.That is special.  I feel like we're in on something that only a select group of people get to be in on.  It's brought people into our lives that we wouldn't ever had in our lives otherwise.  We have an understanding that's unspoken with these people.  We're a part of an exclusive club, and though that never was my thing (to be exclusive or a part of a "club"), this feels important and special.  It's given us a grace that we wouldn't have otherwise known.  I guess there will be moments that are so frightening and overwhelming that we want to run and hide, but we wont because our baby is counting on us to be there when he or she arrives.  We're meant for this, and the path may not always be easy, but it'll still be our path.  It's a tremendously important gift that we've been given.  We have to cherish and appreciate it each and every day, even when it feels harder than anything else we could ever imagine.