Hope is never lost. If those miracles do not come soon or fully or seemingly at all, remember the Savior's own anguished example: if the bitter cup does not pass, drink it and be strong, trusting in happier days ahead. -President Thomas S. Monson
I have been needing to write down Willow's journey to our family since it all started last October, 2013. But really her journey here started long before that. Little did I know a loving Heavenly Father was waiting to bless me and my family with a special gift. First he needed to gain my trust in him and have faith that he was in control of things. Unfortunately that lesson took a long time for me and a lot of anguish. This is our Family's Journey to welcoming a miracle from my point of view, and how the Lord was refining, teaching, and preparing me for his blessings.
The paper work was approved the end of November 2012. We were in New York City for Thanksgiving, and got the call that everything was finished up and our profile was up on, itsaboutlove.org for potential birth moms to see. Each step the adoption process is like a roller coaster, you get on and brace yourself for the ride. The paperwork alone is so draining. When you finish, you get off, take a deep breathe, relax, and wait for approval. Then you get the call that everything is a go and jump right back on the roller coaster. You feel like your on a dating website and constantly check to see; how many views on your profile, what part of the profile they are looking at most to see if you can improve anything, how many people hit the contact link. I think I checked daily to see what kind of traffic was going on with our page. Although, despite checking a lot, it didn't seem to consume my thoughts as much. After all I was chasing around a two year old! My thoughts were also somewhere else. I was having a really hard time with depression and anxiety that just kept getting worse and worse. More and more time just kept going by with not hearing from anyone. This among many other things were sending me spiraling. On top of that, we kept hearing things about the church discontinuing the Adoption program. When we got word that our office was not going to be doing home studies anymore, I started to loose a lot of faith. No home studies means, no more renewing our profile. Means, getting sent to other agencies and if you can't afford that, then the it was time to get off the ride. Every month down with out any word was getting to hard to bear. We had until the end of November 2012 to be picked by a birth mom or we were done and wouldn't be able to start the process again for a very long time, due to it being so expensive. I kept thinking and telling Lance, why did we even start this process!? I was angry because at that point, nothing was looking good for us. Lance with the strong faith that he has kept reminding me, it wasn't for nothing, whether the outcome was good or bad. We could learn something from it. It started taking over my thoughts. It broke my heart to think that there was going to be so much time between Mason and his next sibling. I started having panic attacks daily. Why wasn't I aloud to have a baby? What was God trying to teach me? Why did I have to have this messed up body that could't bear children of it's own? Why was I so broken? This is the first time in the last 10 years that I ever grieved the fact that, I had that blessing taken away from me. It wasn't fair. It was hard to except and see things clearly, I was very sick. Being mentally sick is by far much harder then being struck with a life threatening illness, and that wasn't easy either. As our year was coming in on us, we needed to decide what our plan was. Were we just going to be done or try elsewhere? The only way I was going to be able to keep going was to tell myself, I didn't want another baby. I was fine with just Mason. I started to talk myself into it and started to believe it. It felt good to start letting go of things. Things were starting to look up again, and I was starting to get on a better path.
In October of 2013, I decided I was OK with completely letting go of the dream of having a sweet baby in my arms. I had been holding on to a few things for the next baby so we wouldn't have to re-buy them. It was time to let it go. I sent out an email to our ward relief society mailing list, to get rid of everything. It actually felt very freeing, like this huge weight was being lifted off my shoulder.
On October 26, 2013 things changed. The email we had been waiting for for almost a year came.
The paper work was approved the end of November 2012. We were in New York City for Thanksgiving, and got the call that everything was finished up and our profile was up on, itsaboutlove.org for potential birth moms to see. Each step the adoption process is like a roller coaster, you get on and brace yourself for the ride. The paperwork alone is so draining. When you finish, you get off, take a deep breathe, relax, and wait for approval. Then you get the call that everything is a go and jump right back on the roller coaster. You feel like your on a dating website and constantly check to see; how many views on your profile, what part of the profile they are looking at most to see if you can improve anything, how many people hit the contact link. I think I checked daily to see what kind of traffic was going on with our page. Although, despite checking a lot, it didn't seem to consume my thoughts as much. After all I was chasing around a two year old! My thoughts were also somewhere else. I was having a really hard time with depression and anxiety that just kept getting worse and worse. More and more time just kept going by with not hearing from anyone. This among many other things were sending me spiraling. On top of that, we kept hearing things about the church discontinuing the Adoption program. When we got word that our office was not going to be doing home studies anymore, I started to loose a lot of faith. No home studies means, no more renewing our profile. Means, getting sent to other agencies and if you can't afford that, then the it was time to get off the ride. Every month down with out any word was getting to hard to bear. We had until the end of November 2012 to be picked by a birth mom or we were done and wouldn't be able to start the process again for a very long time, due to it being so expensive. I kept thinking and telling Lance, why did we even start this process!? I was angry because at that point, nothing was looking good for us. Lance with the strong faith that he has kept reminding me, it wasn't for nothing, whether the outcome was good or bad. We could learn something from it. It started taking over my thoughts. It broke my heart to think that there was going to be so much time between Mason and his next sibling. I started having panic attacks daily. Why wasn't I aloud to have a baby? What was God trying to teach me? Why did I have to have this messed up body that could't bear children of it's own? Why was I so broken? This is the first time in the last 10 years that I ever grieved the fact that, I had that blessing taken away from me. It wasn't fair. It was hard to except and see things clearly, I was very sick. Being mentally sick is by far much harder then being struck with a life threatening illness, and that wasn't easy either. As our year was coming in on us, we needed to decide what our plan was. Were we just going to be done or try elsewhere? The only way I was going to be able to keep going was to tell myself, I didn't want another baby. I was fine with just Mason. I started to talk myself into it and started to believe it. It felt good to start letting go of things. Things were starting to look up again, and I was starting to get on a better path.
In October of 2013, I decided I was OK with completely letting go of the dream of having a sweet baby in my arms. I had been holding on to a few things for the next baby so we wouldn't have to re-buy them. It was time to let it go. I sent out an email to our ward relief society mailing list, to get rid of everything. It actually felt very freeing, like this huge weight was being lifted off my shoulder.
On October 26, 2013 things changed. The email we had been waiting for for almost a year came.
hi my name is kelli i am single and about 13 weeks pregnant and have chosen to have my baby adopted and really like your message that you have on itsabout love.org i would really love to know more about what kind of things you are will to have with an open adoption
This came a few weeks before our profile was to be taken down, and one week after I had given everything away. I was in shock and udder disbelief. I showed Lance laughing saying, ummmmm so we got an email. I was like, so what do we do!? I had written this off. Now was the next roller coaster.
