Beautiful Life (Who would have thought!?!)

I have one more session to summarize, and I promise I will get to it this weekend.

However, I just wanted to throw out to the world how beautiful my life is because that is what is filling my heart today. I blog, a lot, and have for many years, but only with this blog have I ever let my guard down with my more personal feelings. Our pain of infertility and our pain of the waiting with our adoption and our pain with dealing with Little Bug's special needs, those are all things that have been real trials for us, for me, and as we walked those roads, the pain was intense, the light seemed dim, and the toll was taxing.

Yet, we shared that with very few people. Sure, our close family and best friends knew that we were dealing with these things, but they didn’t know how it was feeling to deal with them. These were roads they had not and were not traveling. They could not walk these roads with us in the most literal sense of the word, just as I cannot walk the road of Ali(ce)'s last trimester with her. Support yes, fully understand, no. In the last year I have seen how powerful and therapeutic it is to let these feelings out and share them with others who have or are walking these same long and lonely roads and let them take your hand and walk with you when it gets too hard.

I didn't have the network of support then that I do now. The moments I consider darkest are still locked away without having been verbally expressed to many people. I knew only a couple people who had ever adopted from anywhere before we went to Korea to get Little Bug, and only one person who at the time I even had any level of personal comfort with. I wrote her an e-mail during one of the lowest points in my life, just days before we traveled to get Little Bug. A portion of the text reminds me of the trials and blessings that were warring within me even then.

I was kind of in a dark place this weekend, very bitter and worried and just generally helpless. I've been sort of sick to my stomach for the last few days waiting to hear, and he is all I can think about. I'm not really sure where I am going with this, other than that I just really wanted to tell you because I know that you understand that helpless feeling of having your child be so far away from you. The idea of backing out of the adoption makes me heartsick. The one positive is that it has (in a really weird way) helped me start the bonding process with LITTLE BUG, not just the idea of him, but him as a person. I don't want another baby, I want him. That took me a couple of days and a lot of tears and prayers realize that, but I am finally at that point. Even if they come back and tell us that he has some big challenges, I can't imagine turning away from him now. And it might be that there is nothing going on after all and that he just needs a little more tummy time and a little more motivation to bridge that gap. Either way, I feel like he was meant to be with us, and I just want him home.

To have been wrapped up and lifted up by people who understood perhaps not my specific situations and emotions and fears and heartaches, but at least the nature of them in general, would have been so helpful. Someone who could have stood directly next to me on that road and pointed out the light that I might not have been able to see. As so many of my friends now face challenges on their own roads, I take comfort in the fact that most of them seem to have people they can turn to who will take their hand and squeeze it tight; people who can see the light because they have already been to the end of those roads or who might be just a step or two ahead. It won't make the road any straighter or easier or more clear, but I know how it feels to have walked my roads alone, and it didn't feel good.

For me, my roads continue to wind. Don’t all of ours? Somehow, once you get to the end of the road, another one appears. One with new turns and twists and potholes. Yet, we can face these new roads with new eyes and a stronger heart because of the roads we have already traveled. Robert Frost should have wrote about that road, the ones we DID take. How amazing is it to look back on those trials in our lives and see the blessings they have given us, the lessons we have learned? I only wish we could have a glimpse of that forthcoming joy as we were going through those dark times. It would make it so much easier, but alas, that isn't really the way it works. The heartache is part of the process.

So, why is my life so beautiful, and why have I just word vomited a small novel with literary references, e-mail quotes, and questionable analogies? Because I put this picture on my work desktop.
This picture tells the story of my life. Everything I have ever wanted, hoped for, begged for, despaired for, endured for, prayed for, cried for, cared for, and wished for is wrapped up in this little snapshot of my life. It speaks more to me than I think anyone could ever know, every little detail. It's the glimpse I wish I would have had to spur me through those trials.

That's a truly beautiful thing.