Putting the Whole
Hideous Thing
Behind Me
by Blogging
About It
It made us laugh, but in the same jaded, angry way we've laughed for years now. We decided not to pick it up.
This journey has made some undesirable characters out of us. We go to work, we meet with friends, we love our loved ones. However, the anger bubbles just beneath the surface and rears its head in ugly ways every once in a while. A few weeks ago, we both had finally had enough. There comes a time in every adventure when the element of excitement turns to something sad, or worse. With us, that often means turning the car around or boarding the plane home because vacation is over. In this case, it meant that we had become people we didn't like anymore. Anxious, cynical, cheated people who weren't able to see the beauty around us because we were crowded by the mess of buffoonery too close in view. It was time to put an end to it.
We realize that we've been quiet lately. It's been over a month since our last post and it was a long time before that since you heard from us. Just know that there hasn't been anything we were comfortable sharing. It's been a time of making hard decisions and we needed to make that an insular process. Not all caterpillars are ugly and not all butterflies are beautiful, so it can't be said that it's always a progression for the better, but you get the idea. We've come out of our little cocoon and are beginning to spread our wings again, tentatively.
Some people have the tenacity to wait through multiple failed baby placements, or even years of silence for their special bundle to arrive through adoption. On the other hand, we know people who would never even consider adoption to grow their family. Everyone has to know their limits. Even if we didn't know what those limits were when we started down this path, we've reached ours. After three failed matches, two of them criminal, and four babies that we were told to welcome into our hearts because they were "ours," but they turned out not to be, Josh appropriately declared that no one ever gets to hold our major life decisions in the palm of their hand again (as long as we're conscious). And, I agreed.
Right about the time that a majority of our state was under water, our spirits needed that cleansing rain. We soaked it up. We used it to deliver us a new perspective and a renewed interest in the little things around us. Our favorite summer concert venue was completely lost to the floods here a few weeks ago and the owner simply said that he was "power washing the facility." That was the perspective we needed to absorb. What could result from the torrential soak we've endured are cleaner, fresher versions of us. But not if we didn't first make the move to wash away the layers of stagnant muck.
For those of you who like the details, here is how it went with the adoption agency. Just weeks after we made the decision to search for our sanity again and put an end to this pursuit, we got a message from them. It turns out that they aren't working with any birth mothers and they are sending all families on a search for a new agency to work with to grow their family. We had already been in talks with another agency for about five months. We had already received the application packet and our hearts sank at the thought of diving in again and starting over. We had already made the decision not to put ourselves through that. When we heard from the agency with which we were working, we felt some comfort in having an emotional head start on this next round of surprising twists along our gnarled path. We weren't surprised at their closing and we were already clear on what our next steps were before they dealt the latest blow to our dreams.
Maybe the butterfly was an optimistic image to put in your minds. We're certainly not fluttering around weightless just yet. We might be more like that 100-year-old tortoise at the zoo. The one that mostly sits and watches what is going on around her, sticking her head out to see if anything new and interesting might be happening and quickly retracting when she senses danger or annoyances. Yes, we're cautious right now. But, we are sure of our decision and that's refreshing after years of questioning what's next. We have finally shed a few pounds of doubt that hovered over us for too long.
Thank you for your support for the past 22 months through reading these posts about our roller coaster. We don't know what the future holds, but we're sure it will be an improvement over parts of the past. We've committed to making one hard decision at a time, and nothing else. You know, living in the moment...
Eventually, you might notice that spring in our step again. For now, we're just getting our springy shoes on. With summer coming to a close, and a greenhouse to build, we're going to focus on growing our farm-ily instead of our family.
