Saturday, January 11, 2014

Letting Go


I started this post in November.  I came soooooo close to finishing it.  But inevitably I got called away or booted off the computer or horribly distracted by something else.  So this week I finally decided to finish it. For some reason I felt the need to add this disclaimer and make a big deal about it. Maybe because I start the post by saying that it’s Adoption Month.  Please know that I know that it’s no longer Adoption Month.  To most people, at least… in my world, it’s always adoption month :) Happy reading!


-Back on some cold (I’m assuming) and lazy (because I spent hours typing this and not cleaning the house or playing with Libby) afternoon in early-mid-November-

It’s National Adoption Month, for anyone that didn’t know :) There are beautiful pictures and quotes and stories flying around social media, and I especially appreciate those of you who have gone out of your way to send them directly my way.  This morning I watched some really touching stories on the Today Show.   I’ve been so caught up in mothering lately that I haven’t really spent much time in thought about ADOPTION.  About the actual process that brought us to where we are today.

As my blog is a direct reflection of my (often scattered) thoughts, it’s been quite a while since I wrote actual “adoption” post.  I’ve written lots about Libby and her unique challenges and general two year old problems.  And the joys.  Of course the joys :)  But in honor of adoption month, and the many of you who are in the process, considering the process, or are curious about the process, I’d like to go back there for the first time in a long time.

Generally my approach to blog writing is to wait until something is welling up in my heart, to the point that it’s about to burst and I feel I HAVE to write or I’m going to explode.  That’s why I seem to publish in “spurts.”  Some days (months) I’m just not feeling it. I’m just living life and my focus is almost entirely on the day-to-day.  During these times I might get a bit of a whim, and jot down some notes for a future entry.  But I have to be in a pretty hardcore MOOD to actually write and publish an entire post.  So if I look back and see the last time I felt THIS strongly compelled to share my feelings about infertility, it was Mommies-at-Heart written for Mother’s Day. That’s a long time ago! Which must mean that my heart, in that regard, has been pretty peaceful.  Content.  Maybe I’ve finally let go.

When something is bothering me, or I’m in the midst of a trial, it is my constant prayer that God would give me an answer or help me to let it go.  When He does grant that peace, it doesn’t come overnight.  It comes in little waves, as the hurt and anxiety lessen bit by bit.  Eventually I stop feeling that desperate need to let go.  I know I’m still not 100% healed, but I’m on the road, and I clear some space in my head for other things.  I can go a couple days without thinking about what had once been constantly on my mind.  Then a week.  One day I realize I haven’t thought about it for a month or two months, and finally, I can’t specifically remember the last time I about it.  And that’s when I know… I’ve let go.

Built into the essays and many steps of our adoption process was the requirement that we had “grieved” our infertility.  I get why they “require” that.  They want people who are serious about adoption.  They want people who WANT to adopt.  At the very least, they want you to put some serious thought into whether or not you have moved on from the dreams that have haunted you for years.

We thought we had.  We mostly had.  We wrote some pretty words and convinced ourselves and our social worker and pretty much everyone else who needed convincing that we had moved on.  But knowing you need to move on, and telling yourself that you have moved on, doesn’t always mean that you’ve actually, FULLY done it.  At times, the old feelings of jealousy and despair crept back to the surface. Now they carried an extra sting, more bitter than ever because I had been so certain I was over it.

Baby-naming was one of the things that would bring out the ugly.  In the final months of a close friend or family member’s pregnancy, I would start to get a taaaaaaaaaaad (that’s a large tad, which means “medium amount,” but flows more nicely than “medium amount”) territorial about baby names.  I could handle the pregnancy itself with just a touch of wistfulness.  And I was a Baby Shower Rock Star.  I had become a PRO at handling the awkward moments and personal questions.  But baby names… ooooh. Watch out.  Not that I ever bothered to TELL anyone “Here are the names that Tim and I have had picked out for our first children since before we were married.  Are they on your list? Would you consider saving them for us? It would mean a lot after all we’ve been through.” No, that would have been the rational, decent thing to do.  Instead, I would just keep all this baby-name anxiety and near-rage bottled up inside, sweating it out each time a new little one (whose parents were close enough acquaintances that double-naming would be awkward) came into the world.  I guarded those names FIERCELY as friend after cousin after sibling after friend continued to pass me up and crank out kid after kid.

These are names that represent years and years of dreaming about my own pregnancy.  These were to be our first children.  Sitting in a church pew the spring before I was married, I nearly jumped out of my seat when “Jackson James” popped into my head.  We had been thinking about names for months and this one was PERFECT.  I reveled in my cleverness for a few more seconds and then gave myself a silent yet stern talking-to about focusing on the sermon.  After all, this WAS the first time Tim, a first-year seminary student, had preached in church.  Later that day, I told him (not the part about losing focus during his sermon) and he loved it, too.  We never wavered in the years to come.  We dreamed of Jackson, a little blond boy with green eyes, mischevious yet strong and silent.  “Jack, Jax, or JJ” - I hadn’t decided.  

Our little girl’s name took a little longer.  It was settled sometime during the first year of our married life, but I waffled a few times over the years to other pretty names like Sadie and Nataly (I loved it with a “y”) and a few others I can’t recall so they couldn’t have been that great.  But we always came back to Kiera Leigh.  Eventually we settled for good, and only waffled on the spelling.  Tim was all gung-ho about “Kira,” something about Star Trek.  Don’t ask me.  I entertained “Kyra” for about a day and then realized it would probably be the most easily mispronounced version of the name.  I loved how “Keira” looked on paper, but was concerned about breaking the “i before e” rule… especially since our surname follows the rule.  So Kiera it was.  A little girl with brown eyes and pigtails helping me in the kitchen, who loves to read, write, and sing and has a big heart for puppy dogs.  “Kiki,” for as long as she’d allow it.

I know I’m not the only one.  At some point, most every mom dreams out her kid’s entire life before the little monster ever has a chance to live it. Once Real Life happens, some moms (and dads) are better at adjusting that plan than others.  When it comes to adoption, The Plan goes out the window by force.  You surrender all genetic control.  You agree that someone else will be your child’s first “Mommy.” Someone else will feel the kicks and hear the first cries.  Someone you don’t even know yet will be a part of your life forever, in a degree yet to be determined, in an ever-changing relationship that will sometimes hurt and sometimes heal  - for everyone involved.

There was nearly a year between the last time I filled out an adoption form or wrote an essay about how I had grieved our infertility, and the first day I held my daughter and kissed her sweet little forehead.  In an instant my thoughts flipped from “how will I love her as my own?” to “how could I NOT love her as my own?” and “how did I ever live without her?” I got so caught up in LOVE and mothering and baby showers and forging relationships with her birth family, that I had not a moment to even realize that I WASN’T thinking about loss and grief and people using “my” baby names.

Fast-forward a year and a half to November 2013.  I’m relaxing on the couch with a third cup of coffee because Libby decided to sleep until 11:00.  After watching live adoption finalizations out on the Today Show plaza, I enjoyed a quiet house and an hour’s worth of very pensive dishwashing.  It HIT me.  That moment when you can’t specifically remember the last time you thought about that thing that used to hurt you so much.  Wow, it had been AGES since I’d felt jealous or cried myself to sleep over the whole thing.  And it wasn’t because I was too busy, or too tired.  It was because I had let go.  It HAD to be.  Because the week before, when my cousin had told me her baby boy, due in December, would be named Jackson, I did not freak out in the slightest.  What I felt for her was 100% joy and pride and 0% possessiveness over the name.  Jackson (with a middle name of Lee, by the way, isn’t that the craziest?) would be hers, ALL hers. I was so relieved and excited that finally that dreaded moment had come, and yet I was feeling nothing but pure happiness for her. Somewhere in all the mess and madness and magnificence of the last 18 months of Libby, God has allowed me to let. it. go.

This post was a long time coming.  It is a farewell to Jackson and Kiera, the fantasy of our first children that we clung to, the shining hope that brought us through many bitter years.  They served us well.  They made us happy.  They helped us dream at a time when our dreams were all but stamped out.  But they are no longer our first children.  And it seems wrong to “save” the names for our future children, biological or adopted.  It’s like we’re pinning these huge expectations on them that go all the way back to our earliest years of marriage, when we were totally different people.  And it seems wrong to Jackson and Kiera.  They did a beautiful job and I will always love them for who they were.  And who they weren’t.

And it would be very, very wrong to Libby… almost like she wasn’t our first choice.  Oh, sweet girl, you are through and through my first choice, because you are GOD’S choice for my life.  And besides, wasn’t there also a story about the name Elizabeth?...

Tim and I dated for three full years before we got engaged, and it was another 20 months until we were married.  We had a lot of time together to plan our “future” before life actually became “our future.” But I KNOW it was long before we were even engaged, long before Jackson James popped into my head at the most inappropriate of times, long before Kiera Leigh had the spelling of her name finalized, that this most precious little exchange occurred:


“I really like the name Elizabeth… you know, for a girl someday.  It’s cute.  She’ll probably be cute like you.”

“You’re silly.  I’m not cute.  Hmmmmm…  Elizabeth…  Maybe.  I’ll think about it.”