This post is totally for me. I just need to get some feelings out. At the very end of October, Aaron and I found out about a young, expectant mother, here in our own state, who was just beginning to make an adoption plan for her child. I won't share all the details, but the details made everything seem very right. We were still in the AOH Ghana program, expecting a toddler boy and having a baby girl really didn't seem to fit at first, but when I heard the details, it all just seemed "perfect." I began to really want to know this expectant mother and began praying for her. I felt like God opened a place in my heart for her, a place where I was loving her without even knowing her name!

By the end of November, we had talked with lawyers and agencies (she really wanted to do a private adoption, though), had sent her our homestudy (with the identifying info removed), and had been told by our contact (I've never actually spoken with the mother) that she was very positive about us and that there was one other family she was looking at. We were supposed to meet with the mother sometime in December, as the other family would also do.

I waited for something to be scheduled. I called and left messages. They were never returned. I started preparing myself for something other than my ideal. I let myself be absorbed into the holiday nuttiness. I even got to the point last week where I felt okay with our family being what it is and just being done adding to it; just to get on with our life as a happy, little family of four.

Finally, I called again yesterday and got through to our contact. She briefly (and somewhat rudely) told me that another family had been chosen. That was it. I was stunned and heartbroken. I just totally didn't expect that. I don't know what I expected. I sort of expected that. But I truly did not expect it to hurt so much. It hurt much, much worse than I had ever imagined. I had thought I was not letting myself get too attached (the heart is deceitful above all things--and I should know by now how easily I get swept up in a dream).

I feel like it was so unfair that we never got to meet the expecting mother. I really wanted to meet her. There were times that I felt like I wanted to know her even more than I wanted to have the baby. And, I feel like if we had had that chance, things might have been different. Should I have tried harder? Should I have called one more time? Did I try too hard? Should I not have left that last message?

And, I'm angry that our contact didn't bother to call--or even to be compassionate and kind in delivering the news when I finally got a hold of her.

I'm wondering how the expectant mother is doing. The whole thing has been very difficult on her. I wonder if she just couldn't think about it anymore and just went with the other family because it somehow seemed easiest. I wonder if she's doing better emotionally now? I haven't heard anything about her since Thanksgiving time--a lot could have happened in that space.

Most of all I wonder, what now? Will we adopt again? Or, is this our family? Even though I felt okay last week with just the four of us being our family, I also really thought that God was leading us together with this birthmom. It was almost like I had thought I was some kind of neo-Abraham, putting this dream of 4 children on the altar, raising the knife, and that now that my hand was up there (ie--comfortable with just the 2 kids), some angel would swoop in and tell me not to kill the dream: the baby was to be ours. But, that didn't happen. So, is it over? Do I give it up? Or, do I continue to hold out hope that something might change and that the baby will end up with us after all?

I can't hear what God is saying (if He's saying anything directional at all right now) through the tears and grief and the constant need to forgive. I just keep clinging to the last thing He said (that He's doing something new) and trying to throw all my hope at Him instead of at a specific outcome. It feels a little bit like trying to hold the ocean in the palm of your hand. It's taking nearly all my emotional energy to just be normal, and to not eat every last bit of chocolate in the house.