Sacred Heart of Jesus, We Place All Our Trust in You

Throughout adoption there is a mixture of the most intense of joys and of the deepest grief. It is so unnatural and at the same time so human that we are able to hold those things in tension. Someone goes home with a beautiful child to love and sacrifice their lives for and the other sacrifices in another way and goes home with empty arms. Adoption shows us how beautiful our brokenness can be because adoption is redemption and redemption is beautiful. But we can’t skip past the tragedy that got us there. When a child is adopted, they enter into a family which loves them intensely and gains what we all hope is a beautiful life, but in doing so, they also had to lose out on a life that could have been.

After three years of being on this journey in some form or fashion, on Sunday we were chosen by a young woman to be her child’s parents. On Wednesday, that child was born. And we had the honor and privilege of being there for her and her beautiful mama.  We held her, and kissed her and shared our excitement with our close friends and family. We changed her diapers and rocked her for her first night of 3am feedings, we comforted her for her first heel stick. We loved her intensely and without reservation.

But we also were aware that she was not ours, not yet. That all this time we were being given was a gift from the woman who chose us to Tim and I. It was gratuitous time, not owed to us and so appreciated. She also wanted us to name her for her first birth certificate, and so we named her Cora (Latin for heart) in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  It was the name from our list, which seemed most like it fit.

This morning, the woman who asked us to be her child’s parents realized that she was not able to carry out her adoption plan. We have always said that we want whoever ends up being our children’s birthparents to feel peace in their choice. So, we kissed that sweet, perfect little girl whose face we had spent 24 hours memorizing and we let her go back to her mama. She needed us to love her baby for that day so that she would be free to learn that she could be her parent and to set her chin and be a mama to that child through whatever the hard circumstances of her life led her to make an adoption plan. She was not meant to be ours and for us that is grief.

One of the little lady’s nurses, Joy, said as we collected our packed bags meant for our child, that she loved us and that while this is so hard…  something about sun after a rain and “I hope that you can find joy on the other side of this darkness and that you are able to adopt a child very soon.”

We love her and her words, but as I was reflecting on that on our long drive home. I realized that that isn’t quite right. This isn’t the rain before the sun. This is the sunshower. We got to love that little girl for her first 24 hours and that is joy. She gets to go to her home with a mama who is reaffirmed in her ability to parent and that is joy. Even now when it is so fresh and our feeling of grief is so visceral and I cannot type these words without wiping my tear stained cheeks and exhausted eyes, we know this is the joy in tension with this grief. That that is adoption. This time it was our family who will go home with empty arms.

I think maybe this is why we felt that this little one’s name was Cora. What better example is there of the tension of joy and suffering than in Our Lord’s Sacred Heart?

Sacred Heart of Jesus, through this sadness and through the unknowns of what Your Will is for us and even though we don’t feel like it right now, We Place All Our Trust In You.