Mess

All those who thought we'd be a chunk of the way through August and still no baby, raise your hands! No? No one? Yeah me neither.

Our birth mom's due date has come and gone, and we are still waiting. No one, especially me, could have predicted that. Thankfully there is an end in sight, as she is scheduled to be induced early this week. When I got that news from our case worker I breathed a huge sigh of relief. This wait is truly taking its toll on me emotionally, and I just don't know how much more of this I can take. And putting that into perspective, I cannot even begin to fathom the kind of toll it is taking on our birth mom.

I realized though, after my sense of relief that the wait is nearly over, that with the "end" in sight, comes the harsh reality of what is now imminent. This baby girl is going to be born, and we are going to have to face some very, very hard stuff.

The hardest part about all of this is just having no idea what to expect. We don't know the severity of the baby's condition, really, we were just told to expect the worst. But what exactly that will look like we don't know. We don't know how supporting "Kim" through the labor and delivery will work, we've never done that before! I'm incredibly anxious about how the whole thing will go down, and mostly nervous about doing or saying the wrong thing or not doing something I should be doing.

I'm scared that seeing and holding this baby girl will bring back a flood of memories and emotions that I had with Lily, and how will my heart react to that? How will Josh's? I'm scared of the unknown, and I'm scared of the stuff we do know.

I am terrified that God will clearly call us to do something even more scary than what we are already being asked to do. I'm scared about what will happen with the adoption after all of this and because of all of this. How will it affect us? How soon will we be ready to put ourselves out there again? What if God has something totally different in store and decides, once again, to blind side us? It almost seems like He enjoys doing that sometimes.

I have no idea how to prepare for this situation. There are simply no blogs or books about "Supporting A Birth Mom Through the Labor and Delivery of Her Terminally Ill Child That You Were Planning To Adopt". I mean, seriously, how do I prepare for this?

We are going into this completely blind. I have never felt so unprepared. And I really don't like it.

The only thing, literally, that I can do at this point, is pray. Pray that God works all of this together for good, whatever good He can scrape out of the bottom of this mess. Pray that He will show us how to love "Kim" and the baby, that He will use us to do whatever it is He wants done through this whole situation.

What a mess. What a mess.

I say that to Josh at least ten times a day.

It is just such an utter mess. I hurt so much for Kim, for this baby, for Jake and Eisley, for us. It hurts. It is just so not how things were supposed to go. We were supposed to be planning to bring this little girl home. We were supposed to be excited and over the moon happy that this day was finally here. It wasn't supposed to have a looming sense of dread and fear. People were supposed to be smiling and excitedly asking me if the baby was here yet, not hesitantly asking in sympathetic, hushed voices if there was any news.

Jake told me in the car the other day, "Mommy, I just don't think thewe's gonna be a miwacle this time." He was talking about the baby and the possibility that maybe she'd be okay after all, that maybe she could come home with us after all. What do you say to that? In my head I thought, nope, you're right, I don't think there's gonna be a miracle either, so don't hold your breath kid.

Now I may be honest with my kids, but I'm not that honest. So I just didn't say anything. I sighed. And we just all sat there, driving, saying nothing.

This whole situation just sucks. It just does. It is just such a mess. What a mess.

So, if you are praying for us, here are some things you can pray for.

Please, above all, pray that God be very present in this whole situation. That His hand will be on the whole thing, on all of us.

Please pray for this mom, that God will give her the strength and courage to get through this, that He will make her labor and delivery as smooth as possible.

Please pray for Josh and me. That we will be able to show God's love to this mom and the baby. That God will make it very clear to us what He wants us to do. That He will give us wisdom in making decisions. That He will comfort us through what is sure to be an incredibly difficult week.

Please pray for Jake and Eisley. They are hurting too.

And maybe, just maybe, pray for a miracle. A miracle would be very, very cool.