It’s an odd experience, shaking hands with the mother of your son before you get a chance to hold him. My pulse was racing when my husband and I sat down in the adoption agency office to chat with the woman who was changing our lives at great cost to her own.
“Good to meet you,” she’d said, smiling warmly in a way that would become familiar, reflected in our son’s cheerful face. Later, I tried to consider the anxiety she might’ve felt walking into that room. She had more reasons to be scared than I did, but she didn’t act flustered. Maybe she’d bathed in the same inexplicable peace that had washed over me halfway through our meeting. All at once, I sensed this moment as a God-ordained melding of families birthed from different brands of labor pains.
My husband and I had embarked on the adoption path after years of struggling to conceive. In the midst of our grief, God reawakened our desire to adopt, an idea he had planted early in marriage before we discovered our fertility issues. We set out expectant and hopeful, yet wary of the potential for further heartache.
Though my husband and I chose adoption as a way to grow our family, the choice of who would become our child rested on the will of another woman. This mother faced the shock of an unexpected pregnancy, endured the labor and delivery process, and carried the weight of an agonizing decision about how to care for her child. Whereas we were left wondering when and how we’d have a baby, she had to ponder if she’d take her baby home or place him in someone else’s arms.
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[Photo courtesy Aditya Romansa on Unsplash]
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