Journal

It started with a little red leather journal.

I was a newlywed, living states away from family and friends. Our desperately small apartment filled with boxes of wedding gifts as we tried to make our two lives one. My elementary school yearbooks, his baseball glove. My tea cup collection next to his boomerang. I was in the middle of changing my name, address, and life. And I was job hunting for the first time. I had to go the library to google how to get to Wal-Mart.

One afternoon I decided I needed a break from unpacking and dealing with the bureaucracy of trying to get my new driver's license with my new last name (what do you mean I have to wait until I have a bill sent to my house...all the bills are in my husband's name?!) I slipped into a Barnes and Noble and came across a delicate, leather-bound book. I gathered the last bit of our wedding money and headed to the check out counter. As I drove home with the little journal sitting in the passenger's seat I thought "Now that I'm married, there is the very real possibility of becoming a mother." For the first time in my life, the idea of children was within my grasp, not just a foreign concept that happened to other people. Maybe, one day, I would fill that little journal full of prayers and letters to my baby, our baby. A little blond haired, blue eyes, person that would be half me, half my groom.


We weren't trying to have a baby, and it took a few years of trying NOT to have a baby for things to change. Then one December, our third together...I told my husband that I wanted a baby for Christmas. We were lying in the dark holding hands when I looked over at him and said, "I think I'm ready." On a whim, he answered briskly, "Sure." The next morning I threw out my birth control.

In my stocking that year, I found a small red knitted hat and mittens from him.

That journal has been tucked away on our bookshelves in six different homes. It's been four years and the hat and mittens lie folded in a drawer. What once was an opening to the possibility of new life became desperate prayers for a child. Over the years we've paid good money for invasive, humiliating procedures and I've done a lot of peeing in and on lots of things.



I've been called "childless" at Bible Studies and watched as one small group after another went from all couples to all families. We've been in gatherings where someone inevitably asks, "everyone has kids here right?" and we look at each other and slowly raise our hands and shake our head, "no." Mother's Days at church where all the women who are mothers are asked to stand and receive applause. Conversations with expectant friends where they have looked at me and said, "Being pregnant is no fun." Flippant remarks my family, friends, and acquaintances about how it's "time to start a family isn't it?", or how we, "look so natural holding that baby there," turned into stringent barbs, cutting us to the heart.

After the first year of no baby, we were technically labeled infertile as the "when" of parenthood became "if." And as one season rolled into the next, and years passed the thought of not being able to conceive gripped my heart and clawed into my chest.

Finally, came the crashing words of the doctor, "You should look into adoption as your best option for parenthood." I braced myself against the current of his words, and let them slowly roll over me and carry me out to the yawning grief. I came home, sat on the sofa and cried for a week straight. I crocheted like a mad woman, desperate to have something in my hands, to have something moving me forward. Five afghans, eight scarves, and four hats later, I'm still unpacking the suitcase of grieving.

For me, losing the dream of a biological child mean I have to open it up, take out each piece of pregnancy and let it burn. Pictures flash in my mind...of telling Nathan that there were two pink lines, of feeling the fluttering kicks, of breaking the news to joyful family and friends, of Nathan feeling the stronger bumps and punches, of ultrasound pictures, and shopping for maternity clothes. And I have to grieve the loss of each of these dreams. Some days it's exhausting.

But like any other grief, the ebb and flow subsides and eventually calm emerges. A content heart, and peace that passes all understanding rise where wreckage once stood. And I know that:

"He grants the barren woman a home,

Like a joyful mother of children. "
-Psalm 113

"My grace is enough; it's all you need.

My strength comes into its own in your weakness...

and so the weaker I get, the stronger I become."
-2 Cor. 12

With that truth in my heart, we're creating new dreams. New pictures are forming in my mind. A phone call from the adoption agency. Sharing THAT joyful news with family and friends. A baby shower. Meeting our child's birth mother. Maybe going to the hospital. Being handed a birth certificate with OUR names of it. Being handed our baby. Calling him OURS.

One day I will feel the sweet breath of a sleeping newborn on my neck. And it will be so worth the wait.

But for today that new dream is starting with an entry into that little red leather journal.