The New Year

Anyone who has been keeping up with us over the last year by observing this space would probably agree that “shipwrecked” would be an apt description. It has certainly felt that way at times. In fact, there have been days when we even felt like castaways, when each tangential movement of the sun’s arc above us felt like the giant hand of a clock. Almost every day, the nagging thoughts of futility and lost time nibbled at our spirit. At night, our wreckage glowed under the immense universe of stars, all of them casting their austere and unfeeling gaze on us.

While recently perusing one of our coffee table books entitled “Earth from Above”, I came across a thought-provoking image. As I held it in front of me, this picture seemed to represent a sort of hopeless, incurable inertia. Something about it stuck to me, and I could not put it down.

It was of an enormous ship rusting in the middle of the desert. The northern part of the Atlantic coast of Namibia is called the “Skeleton Coast”. The Bushmen of the Namibian interior call the region "The Land God Made in Anger”. In these parts, the stormy waters wash huge vessels deep inland and then recede, leaving the ships awkwardly stranded far from the coastline.

It’s funny to think that at this very moment in time, in a wildly distant landscape, giant ships creak and squeal in the Namib Desert. And all that is heard between the colossal moaning of abandoned steel in the desert wind is absolute silence.

A few days away from the office has allowed for some quiet reflection. And so I am spending some time in that silent space and reflecting back upon the events of the last year and how they have led us here.

This message you’re reading, another page from our sea-hardened, sun-bleached captain’s log, could not possibly describe every aspect of our emotional journey this year. Suffice it to say that after the great storm of 2012, our ship finally lies quietly and at peace on barren earth. Our sails are torn and still. I imagine desert nomads and herders staring up with mild curiosity at our ridiculous and destitute hopecraft lying marooned in the sand. They would see our present situation as immensely strange. Why would we ever decide to do this to ourselves?

We have been told recently that we are not the decision makers, that we are not the ones who get to decide the outcome of this process. And the present circumstances would certainly point to that conclusion. But while so much gets credited to the birth mother for her courage and that all-important decision for her child, I can only speak for us when I say that, while we might not be in control of the outcomes, we have certainly made some of the most profound decisions of our lives over the last year. Most importantly, we decided to open our hearts and minds to growing our family through adoption.

We have also made some extremely difficult decisions that have taken an enormous amount of courage. We dared to enter the world of adoption, we forfeited our privacy and decided to forego the biological option any longer, we decided to share in full detail the enormity of our emotional journey with others. We decided it was worth it to spill our guts, fill out reams of repetitive paperwork, author a short photographic history of our marriage, complete with an intimate description of our dreams for a family. We decided to trust, amid some very obvious looming uncertainty. We decided to follow the rules, swallow our pride, stand in line, and hope without the benefit of having a complete picture of what awaited us… and ultimately bear the brunt of others’ decisions, be they downright malicious or understandably unpredictable. We decided to do all of those things. So you see, we’ve made plenty of decisions, and yet whether or not we will actually adopt still remains to be seen. Of course, we never actually made the decision to adopt; we simply decided to embark on the process. However, if there were an emotional surcharge that, by paying in tears, might grant us approval from the adoption gods who would then suddenly make it so, then we’ve certainly paid in full.  

Despite what most of us would probably like to believe— that something positive can come of the disappointments we’ve felt—not a whole lot of lessons can really be taken from 2012, except for one: that living intentionally and with great intensity gives meaning to our life. Without making the decision to step out into the void, we would never have known the possibilities that awaited us, good or bad. At least we can say that, looking back on 2012, we faced a lot of uncertainty with courage and togetherness. And we were reminded that we are both there for one another.

After 12 years together, being there for each other is old hat. That is the commitment we made the day we first embarked on our voyage together. And we do take commitment seriously. The time we are living through now is exactly what our tears foretold when we first said our vows. On that peaceful, sea-scented afternoon, amid the giant cypress trees in that golden coastal meadow, we held hands and exchanged rings and promises as our eyes welled up. All of you who were watching from the sun-drenched aisles heard us promise that we would carry each other through any storm.

As we awaken to each new day of the new year, we’ll greet, without expectation, the many possibilities it contains. To exhaust the metaphor, we’ve made the needed repairs to our hopecraft and now have our sea legs in the event of any more unexpected motion sickness on this adoption journey. We hope that more benevolent waters will carry us forth in 2013 as we take our daring vessel beyond this desolate place to a hopeful harbor where it can be finally anchored, safe and sound.

Happy New Year!