Some day when I look back on 2013 I will see it with clarity. Today, it is simply a jumbled mess of emotion, confusion, and challenges that covered not just days, but months at a time. And even though I can already see bits of purpose and pieces of reason emerging throughout the year, the beginning and the end are bookended with deep pain.
Sharp pain can bring sharp truth. But only if you let it.
It can be a toss up, which is more painful, learning the truth or remaining cocooned in ignorance? Like it or not, I think that an emerging truth from this year is how much my heart needs to grow.
I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. ~Ezekiel
There might be a million reasons to explain the continued delays in our adoptions. The official story, which sounds good, (yet again) is that our two governments met just over a month ago. The US agreed to implement better oversight for adopted children and provide several hundred missing post placement reports. This the least our government could do after months of embarrassingly accurate criticisms by Kazakhstan and other countries regarding abuse and neglect of vulnerable children who deserved more than their adopted government gave them. Oversight has been established and hundreds of reports arrived in Kazakhstan on December 19th. Their government is shut down for now (not due to idiocy like ours but because of the holidays.) And we have heard informally that January looks positive for a reopen to US adoptions. I've heard that before and as much as I can dare to hope, it's a little scary to open myself up to being disappointed. Again.
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. ~ CS Lewis
I don't think there is anything in the world that softens your heat more than children. When you feel a tiny baby growing inside you, all the sudden you cry at commercials and laugh with strangers. And no, it's not hormones, it's life. But I'll never feel my third child grow inside me, and actually, across the world, while my son was growing inside another mother, she was probably experiencing the worst year of her life. If we bring our son home in 2014, then he has already been born and it's likely that he is living in an orphanage. So despite my struggles this past year, they pale in comparison to the challenges and heartbreak of a woman I will never know but who in some way I will be closer to than anyone else. And it's an honor. With every frustration I have started to think of her frustrations. With every thought of my son, I've shared that thought with her and with every act of love for him, I've grown to love her more and more. If growing a biological child inside you is part of the typical preparation you undergo to become a mother, then my adoption journey this past year has been atypical and I think I've undergone a heart transformation as a result.
It may sound odd, but I actually started to notice this change throughout fall and into winter. I felt different.
And what happened then? Why in Whoville they say-that the Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day. ~ Dr Seuss
But there's something children's stories don't tell you. If you have a bigger heart, you can have bigger hurt. That's the thing about being vulnerable. You're vulnerable. To everything. Through countless tears and sleepless nights I've felt the knife of this truth pierce my heart. I want to stay hurt, close up, shield my heart and grow hard. But I won't. Maybe that's why I had begun to experience a softer heart. So that I would know it's value. So I could see through my pain and understand the pain of others. Compassion. With suffering. I have no doubt in my mind, or my heart, that I need to live out more compassion and grace for the people in my life. Especially for the little one who will soon come into my life.
So I will go on. While I tie up loose ends with paperwork and try to be ready for good news in January, I will also untie my knots and leave my heart open. Open to grow, open to love, open to be hurt. I will count all hurt as loss so that I may gain a heart that reflects a pure love. Love given from parent to child, an adopted child, brought into family through sacrifice and struggle, and most of all, through a broken heart.
