My desire to be a mother, to love a child, to hold a child, to hear a child call me “mommy” went unfulfilled for a long time.
My husband and I both desired to adopt a Central American child before trying to conceive biologically. After enduring the expensive, frustrating, and time-consuming process of completing volumes of documents all requiring multiple governmental approvals and signatures, we gained approval from both the US government and a foreign government to adopt a child. Six months into the estimated one year waiting period, we excitedly began preparing the nursery – the perfect wallpaper, crib, and Winnie the Pooh curtains and bedding. Expectantly and excitedly, we waited. Then the news came.
The baby we were expecting would not be coming due to issues with the foreign government. The heartbreak of that unrealized dream was devastating. No words can express the sorrow and emptiness that engulfed me each time I passed by the now closed door to that lovely little nursery.
Since the desire for children continued to fill our hearts, we thought perhaps God was directing us not to adopt but to biologically conceive. Time passed.
Only those who have walked the road of childlessness know the awkward trial endured as marital intimacy warps into charts and timeframes. After series of tests, a fertility specialist concluded, “I see nothing decisive to prevent you from conceiving so here are your options.”
Almost a year went by of hormone shots and invasive procedures, yet no results. As we again sat in the specialist’s office awaiting a more advanced procedure, we were dumbfounded as the doctor gave us the news that the hormones I had been given had responded in such a way that he feared to continue with the planned procedure because the result might be me becoming pregnant with five babies, all of which could not survive, and difficult choices may be forced upon us. I was numb. Unbelievably, here was my chance to conceive, but I had to turn away. Was God telling me that my being a mother was not in His plan?
Opening the nursery door, we felt the time had come to surrender our dream of being parents. Not having the heart to pull down the wallpaper ourselves that Keith had so carefully and lovingly hung, we called a professional to look at the room and give us an estimate for removing the nursery wallpaper and replacing it with something else. As the guy took measurements, we sat on the couch in the next room silently. After the worker left promising to call us with an estimate, we continued to sit quietly, neither of us yet willing to let go of our dream. That very week, against all odds and financial means, we signed up with a Christian adoption agency and again began the long tedious road to adopt.
Two years later in August 2004, we brought home our 8-month-old son. The following month we brought home our four-month-old daughter. God had chosen both of our children to be born in Guatemala. God is good.
God used my heartache, my anger, and my waiting to prepare me to love the children He had ordained long before for us to bring into our home. Through the years to follow, He taught me so much about being a mother, and He helped me better understand my relationship to Him as my Heavenly Father.
May God speak into your heart and encourage you in your own walk through the most challenging, humbling, and surprisingly sweet years of motherhood.
