The moment we decided to get a dog – now THAT is a clear memory. It was a gray, gloomy day in October 2007. It was an ordinary Friday. Tim worked in his office at church all
morning, and I had Fridays off work, so I had gotten Starbucks and done some
shopping. I called Tim when I left the
Kohl’s parking lot across town. “Come
outside and meet me in five minutes; I have a surprise for you.” To this day, I
can’t remember what I had bought him. I
pulled into the parking lot at a busy time of day, when school was letting out,
so I had to park far out and walk to the building. Tim squinted as I made my way across the lot
in the late autumn drizzle, holding his “surprise” in my arms. He was certain the gray, bunched-up Kohl’s
bag was a puppy. The puppy we’d wanted since
we’d gotten married a year and half before.
He laughed when I reached him. “I
thought that was a dog in your arms. You
said you had a surprise.”
My reaction was the bigger surprise.
I laughed for a few seconds at the randomness of his comment. Then I “joked” (not really), “No, but we
could go look at puppies right now at the shelter, if you want one so bad.” He laughed, too, a little awkwardly, because
the conversation was quickly turning serious.
It took all of sixty seconds to jump into his car and speed off to the
Fond du Lac Humane Society - all because of a bunched-up shopping bag with some
mystery item inside. And so Charlie
entered our lives, and little Samson about two years later. They are our “boys,” our first babies. They saw us through dark, troubled days as we
struggled for years to find God’s plan for our “real” children. They were always there with cuddles and
sloppy dog kisses and unconditional love when we needed it most.
January 4, 2010 was a “medium” moment: I knew something important was
happening, but wasn’t sure how big it would turn out to be. All my life I had struggled to find an
exercise plan that I enjoyed and could stick with. Well, after Tim finished the Seminary and we’d
experienced our first six months of church potlucks and trying to work out
regularly in Minnesota’s exasperatingly unpredictable weather, we joined a gym
with the rest of 2010’s “resolution” crowd.
This time, we tried something new: “Event Training.” Tim set a goal to
run a half-marathon by May, and I signed up for a sprint-distance triathlon in
August. Well, if there’s any side of me
that’s stronger than the lazy, excuse-making couch potato, it’s the stingy cheapskate
who hates to waste money. I never, ever
gave up that whole year because I hated the thought of losing the $170 I had
paid for my race registration. That early
financial incentive pulled me through the first, most trying months of 5:00
a.m. wake-up calls and sore muscles. As
my body grew stronger, my motivation began to come from elsewhere:
satisfaction, pride, and the burning desire to ACHIEVE that I’d never before
been able to find within myself. For me,
Event Training was the motivation I needed to finally make fitness a
lifestyle. I had no idea, the day I
signed yet another gym membership contract, that this would be IT, and that
three short years later my walls would be decorated with race bibs and medals,
and my dresser drawers stuffed full of wonderful memories in the form of sweaty
race t-shirts.
There are moments in life that seem so inconsequential as they happen,
and you fail to store away the details and make a memory… and all too often,
they end up being the biggest of moments.
There are other moments that you KNOW are moments as they are happening,
and you remember the whens and the wheres so you can tell your grandchildren
all about it in 50 years. But even in
those big, powerful moments, God can still surprise us. He can use those moments and memories for a
much bigger, better purpose than our simple minds could ever imagine.
May 1, 2012 was a BIG moment. A
moment I had been waiting and waiting and waiting for. Waiting fifteen sleepless nights to hear if
beautiful Baby Elizabeth would be ours forever.
On Day One, I had been giddy and optimistic. On Day Eight I was anxious – surely by now they
had chosen a family. We would get a call
any day now. By Day Fifteen, I had
convinced myself that she was going to another family. I couldn’t allow myself to hope so hard. I had built myself some pretty major
emotional defenses, and was just waiting for the call to say “someone else is
getting her,” so I could move on with my life.
But, as the saying goes, no news is good news. And when the phone finally rang with our
social worker’s number, all my defenses shattered on the spot and I felt SO.
MUCH. HOPE in that moment that I stared at my phone and collected myself before
I picked up. And you all know the answer
we got. That was a HUGE moment. So huge that I later took pictures of the
exact chair I was sitting in on my lunch break at the coffee shop when I got
the call. It was a moment I knew I would
want to remember forever.
Over the past year, bits and pieces of the story have come together
from the perspectives of both the birth family and Gene and Dede, who took
Elizabeth home and raised her until we came for her at seven months old. There were several adoption agencies involved
during that time, and a host of other familes who ranged from mildly to
seriously interested in adopting sweet Lizzy.
But when our profile was shown last April, while I was biting my nails
down to nubs waiting for an answer, big moments were happening that I didn’t
even know about, thousands of miles away in California. Lisa looked at our book first and said she “just
knew,” despite the fact that our book made it clear that we are Crazy Packer
Backers, and she’s a fan of some ugly blue and orange team to the south of us
:)
She chose our book, along with three others, to be sent to Gene and
Dede to make the final decision, as they were raising the baby and best knew
her needs. Dede picked up our book
first. She looked over the cover,
flipped through a few pages, and said to Gene, “I found them.”
“Don’t you even want to look at the others?”
“Nope.” She later said it was like buying a wedding dress. When you know, you know, and you just stop
looking.
“Well, I’m going to at least LOOK at these other three first.” Half an hour later, Gene knew it, too. Across the miles, I was clicking away on a
computer, or cleaning my kitchen, or training for my upcoming
half-marathon. Little did I know what a
major moment in my life had just occurred.
All the moments of my life – big, small, and in-between – had their
role in that MAJOR moment of being hand-picked as Elizabeth’s mother. Meeting my husband in college, a moment that
I can’t even remember – and Dede says she could tell from pictures that ours
was a love and a family that she knew she wanted Elizabeth to be a part
of. And moments I do remember – adopting
our first dog, training for my first race – turned out to be so much more than
I ever thought they were at the time.
Those moments became a part of me and made me who I am, and turned out
to be very specific reasons that Dede and Gene fell in love with us and chose
us.
So it makes me wonder… what was last May 1 all about? On the surface,
it seems a perfect memory in itself.
Finding out you’re a mommy for the first time – what could be better?
But I’ve seen God twist and turn the roads of my life more than once before to
suit His ultimate purpose. Maybe last May
1 was more than a big moment… maybe it was just the beginning of something even
bigger. We’ll just have to wait and see.
------------------------------------------------------------
This post is dedicated to the amazing strength and courage of my
cousin, Becky Piper, and her husband Sam.
One little moment a week and half ago completely changed the course of
their lives, and opened countless doors for them to demonstrate their faith,
strength, and love for one another as she recovers from devastating injuries. Please read their story and keep them in your
prayers. Big things are coming from
these two, I just know it.
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