the mystery guest

Goodbye for now

I’m sitting here waiting as I write this post. I’ve quit my job and about to enter into something completely new. Waiting for a friend to come and pick me up and take Ryan and I into our next travel adventure. 

It’s like 20 years ago, when I was about to enter AFSC service (the Quaker Peace Corps). I was sitting on my Dad’s old Army duffle bag, waiting for the ramshackle bus that would take me to the subway that would take me to the plane, that would take me to the train, that would take me to another plane, which would leave me thousands of miles from home, on an indigenous reservation. Where I’d live in community for 2 years, and I knew I wouldn’t be the same person when I came out of it. Everything I had was either sold or traded or donated. The rest was sitting on the curb with me - under my rear in the duffle bag, or next to me in trash bag, waiting for the dumpster men. Everything I had been was gone, and I knew that all my accomplishments meant nothing in the work I was about to enter. 

I’d wanted to leave. I was eager to find out what it was like. I’d known lots of Corps grads, but I knew I wouldn’t really know what it was like until I’d been there and lived through it.  So I was scared and happy and worried and exuberant - all at the same time.

Which is probably why adoption has always felt so familiar, much more so than being pregnant.  Before I left for my AFSC stint, an elderly wise Quaker told me, “It’s the worst job you’ll ever love, and yet…it brings you home to yourself.”

Sounds a lot like being a parent to me. 

As I write this last post, my overwhelming feeling is gratitude.  Gratitude to God for getting us this far. Gratitude for the wonderful friends I’ve met - Carrie, Amy, Maddie, Maria - who’ve made my life so much more full than it ever would have been otherwise.  Gratitude for my husband and the depths of strength I have seen emerge in him. Gratitude to my friend Helen who told me that would happen (yes, Helen, I can hear you laughing at me in heaven about now). Gratitude for my best friend Julie, who died in July, and whose last words to me were about our adoption. She knew I was feeling hopeless, and as we hugged goodbye, she said, “It doesn’t matter how many times you fall. What matters is that you keep getting up.” 

No matter what happens next in this adoption journey, I have gained more than I have lost.  I have learned more than I have cried. And I have been nurtured, far more deeply and fiercely than I deserved. 

Sounds a lot like the love of God to me.

But…. I really still don’t know what our little mystery guest will be like.  Even after they get here, even if I get to post pictures and be proud and happy and glad, it’ll never really be “all done” in the finite way I once thought. I now realize I may never have the one moment when I’ll “just know” that they’re my child.  It doesn’t matter. We’ll make mistakes and fall. We’ll keep getting up. And our family will reveal itself, bit by bit. We’ll learn what God expects of us. Things will evolve. 

Sounds a lot like life to me. 

I hear the horn honking - that’s my ride into the next step of my journey. I wish you and yours a contented, peaceful and productive one.