Wrangler Dani

Last night, we found out we didn’t get chosen by a birth mom who was considering us as an adoptive family for her baby. We’d just come off a long weekend with dear friends (who we really didn’t want to leave) who have a “bouncing baby boy” – a two-year-old with an infectious grin and a penchant for reminding us expectant parents what we’re signing up for.

Before they came, I bought a little farm playset and book for E, because I wanted him to like our house and I was trying to convince myself that I’d need kid stuff soon anyway.

Then, after our friends left and we were a few hours back into the swing of work and life, we heard that we didn’t get picked. It happens all the time, it’s a normal part of adoption, it’s totally expected and not anybody’s fault. But I sat there and held that little farm playset and bawled my eyes out in my way-too-quiet house. I felt stupid for hoping, stupid for crying, stupid for letting myself love little E and dream about a baby Nichols friend for him soon.

I watched a documentary a few months ago about a convent in New York and the women who choose to live there. They describe it as being “skinned alive” that the process of living in such tight community with no relief is agonizing, an exercise in denying themselves and following God relentlessly, in community with broken people. The nuns also shined with joy even in their hardships, and despite strange clothes and soft voices, were attractive and even beautiful. I’ve thought about that documentary a lot as we trudge upward on this expedition, about the idea that something worth doing might be worth quite a lot of pain. Maybe just as these nuns felt called to a strange life, so we are called to an unorthodox family, an incredibly hard season in which I feel very close to crazy almost every day, where the wait is a drip, drip, drip of unmet expectation and almost-incessant prayer. There’s no way to make this easy, no way to make it better, no way to escape the all-encompassing ache of it.

Today I am chanting to myself: I believe. I believe God is good. I believe he’s called us on this expedition. I believe that our boots won’t fall apart and we won’t freeze to death on this mountain, that we will gain the top and come back down the other side in one piece, having seen and done something we didn’t know we could. I believe it’s worth fighting through pain for joy. I believe. Today I’m holding onto a silly farm playset with hope and faith. I believe.