First, there were 2.
Then, we became 4.
Now…we are anticipating number 5!
Yes, it is true! I am pregnant! 🙂
My daughters, my husband and I are all over the moon with excitement about this next step of our lives. It is still a little hard to believe in the midst of the craziness we live, but Little One is growing and I am becoming more and more aware of a new presence in my body every day! My daughters regularly scrutinize me to see just exactly how fat I have become and my clothes are starting to make some real complaints at being stretched and pulled.
I smiled when I met a woman in the grocery store and she said,
“Oh, isn’t that something! You know, it happens so many times! After someone adopts they end up pregnant!”
I grinned at her surprised expression when I said,
“Well, this one was actually part of the plan.”
Yes, we may be crazy.
But we are all very happy and confident that this new little person is entering the drama at just the right time, all in the hands of our Creator.
I feel a little guilty some days.
I have two beautiful daughters, and now I am pregnant with a third child. I know there are so many women who enter the world of foster care and adoption because they’ve been unable to bear children from their womb for one reason or another. I know there are hundreds of women who long to be able to carry a child.
I don’t know what to say.
But I do know this.
This life inside of me is valuable and precious, and I will choose to celebrate it with as little guilt and as much confidence as possible.
I am so excited to meet this child, just as I was so excited to meet my daughters last Spring. They can’t wait to be big sisters, and I am so thrilled they are here to enjoy this journey with us! Just as I was in awe at the arrival of my two beautiful girls in our lives, I am in awe that once again…even after all the mistakes I’ve made…God has chosen to place a child in my care.
My favourite passage of scripture these days is found in Psalm 139.
I found this passage shortly before I realized I was pregnant, while putting together lifebooks for my daughters. I wanted to start their stories with the message that even though I wasn’t a part of their beginning, God was. He was always there, and their presence here with me is not a mistake. When I found these words in Psalm 139 I was filled with both awe and incredible joy. It felt like such a gift to be able to etch these words into the beginning of their stories when there is so much I cannot tell them with confidence.
We are blessed to have pictures of their birth parents…even a picture of their Mommy a few weeks before giving birth, her belly swollen and a smile on her face.
Beautiful.
Yet her presence in my daughters’ lives is mixed with so much uncertainty, pain and even anger at times. I have longed to be able to tell them without a shadow of a doubt that their birth mother loved and cherished them from the beginning; that she made choices for them out of a deep love and selflessness inside of her; that she dreamed of a bright future for them. It would make the story so much simpler to be able to tie it up in a neat bow of heroism and sacrifice all for the good of them. But their stories are not quite that simple, and there are a lot of questions without easy answers. They know much uncertainty and rejection for their young age, and all I can do is to give them honest, age appropriate answers to their many questions…and to say the words “I am so sorry.” It is not my story to twist, paint in bright colours or finish with a flourish.
So imagine the gift of these words.
YOU MADE
ALL THE Delicate INNER PARTS OF MY
BODY & KNIT ME TOGETHER
IN MY MOTHER’S WOMB.
THANK YOU FOR MAKING ME
SO WONDERFULLY COMPLEX!
I PRAISE YOU, GOD!
YOUR WORKMANSHIP IS
MARVELOUS!
HOW WELL I KNOW IT.
YOU WATCHED ME AS
I WAS BEING FORMED IN UTTER SECLUSION;
As I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
YOU SAW ME BEFORE I WAS BORN.
ALL THE DAYS YOU HAD PLANNED FOR ME WERE
WRITTEN IN YOUR BOOK
before
EVEN ONE OF THEM CAME TO BE.
Psalm 139: 13-16
A few weeks later when I found out I was carrying one of these tiny miracles within my own womb, I went back and smiled as I read these verses again. All my children’s names will be written in my Bible beside this verse. No matter who their birth parents may be, what truths their stories may hold or what devastation life may bring…I know this to be life-giving, sustaining TRUTH.
He has seen us long before we were ever born.
We are HIS intricate creation.
Our existence is not a mistake, and before our first breath He could see each day of our lives stretched before Him like the seashore.
We are loved.
We are wanted.
We are in his capable hands.
And that is enough for this Mama to cling to. If I accomplish nothing else I hope to give this knowledge as a gift, buried deep in the hearts of each of my children.
AF
Adoption, Mommyhood & the Rest 