What can I say? How am I supposed to react to comments that make my blood boil? I am a Christian, but that does not require me to be a punching bag for cruel comments. Jesus went into the temple flipping tables and yelling, but the "world" expects me to be a verbal doormat.
As explained previously, we are expectant parents, which means that my momma bear hormones are fully engaged. Of all the comments that feel like a dagger to the heart, "Maybe you'll get pregnant instead" is the serrated edge. Like somehow our adopted baby is the second best option to biological children.
Adoption has always been on the table for cowboy and I. Although its come along a little sooner than we expected, it was always part of the plan. Now that we have committed to this adventure, I jokingly tell people I am "paper pregnant" but its less a joke and more fact than what I think people realize. I love our baby so much, I am anticipating their arrival! If I were to (by some crazy miracle) get pregnant now, We wouldn't discard our adoption, or "put it on hold". I would merely tell people that we were (in a round about sort of way) now expecting twins!
I view our adopted baby just the same as I viewed the baby we lost over a year ago... yes my cowboy and I experienced a miscarriage about a year and a half ago. I wasn't far along, and we found out at our very first appointment that our baby had no heartbeat. You cannot (or maybe you can) imagine the high and low of that day... I have never gone from such utter excitement to absolute soul crushing pain in one instant. That child had consumed my every thought for weeks, I imagined what they might look like, if they would be a boy or girl, and everything else that goes along with what you think when you find out you're expecting. and all in one moment I realized that I would never see them, hold them or tell them I loved them. Going through and grieving that loss was easily the most painful thing I've had to do in my life.
Please, don't believe for one moment that we are adopting to "replace" the baby we lost. That baby is and will always be our first child, and nothing will change that. I've heard from many that God brought them through a terrible trial so that His direction would be clear. In the words of a doctor (on a TV show) "Sometimes when life gives you lemons, you have to make something that resembles lemonade." That miscarriage and the loss of that baby was meant to lead us in this direction.
God created cowboy and I with hearts full of love, and a desire to have a family. As I look back at the trials we have endured together I can see the people He has been molding us into. People that have the ability to love any child he brings us fearlessly and completely.
I am heard by many and understood by few when I say that I love both of my children. Both of whom I have never met. Both of whom I will meet someday.
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