I really debated about "going public" with our current adoption struggle. Infertility and, for us, the urgent and resultant desire to adopt are such personal things - even though many people invade that privacy by being quick to ask about our plans to have more children. (As an aside, I have learned that nothing gets somebody to change the topic faster after asking that question than answering "I apparently have used up all my eggs.")
I also worried about going public because my email was ultimately a prayer request. We have so many friends of different faiths that I was afraid of offending somebody.
So as I was clicking the boxes of who to send the email, I left out a lot of people. Then my computer froze and the email didn't send and I had to start all over. So when I got to the point of clicking the boxes again, I decided to go for broke and click everybody I know. I decided that as people read the part about praying for God's direction, even if they never uttered another prayer about our plight, God would've heard that single utterance and heard my cry.
I have gotten so many emails this afternoon from people near and far who have promised to pray for us and remember us, and knowing that all these people are sending up prayers and sending us well wishes is just more than I could have imagined.
Several friends have sent their emails on to other people and tiny rays of hope have come through in what has otherwise been a dismal, tear-filled day of nothing but discouraging news. A friend of a friend of friends works in the legal arena in Brasilia who might can help and somebody else knows someone who adopted two children here and he's going to get me the names of his legal team and somebody else called the local government adoption agency here in Sao Paulo to discuss our situation to find out the possibilities. I asked for prayer and got so much above and beyond.
Jimmy has tried to prepare me for what I think he sees as nearly unavoidable and eventual disappointment. He works within the confines of the bureaucracy here nearly everyday, but fortunately I don't, so I'm not jaded into thinking that this can't happen.
We had a discussion last night about what could be God's purpose in bringing us through this if not to have a baby at the end of it. Jimmy feels like even if we don't get the baby, maybe having this birth mother brought into our lives might be part of God's purpose. Meeting the birth mother and understanding her plight and her desire to find a good home for this new baby so she can get back to her other children and our trying to help her meet that goal might have to be enough.
Or it might be the unexpected outpouring of gifts from our friends today of prayer and love and trying to help us get this baby. I knew we had great friends, but today I know we have the most extraordinary friends on the planet.
Yesterday I started reading a fictional work called "Unaccustomed Earth" by Jhumpa Lahiri. I don't know what you technically call it when an author chooses to put a little quote in the front of the book before Chapter One starts, but she chose a quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Custom-House". The quote spoke to me for different reasons than it spoke to the author, I'm sure, but here it is:
"Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth."
Brazilian adoption law heavily favors keeping adoptable children in Brazil. I can completely understand their desire for the continuation of heritage, culture, language, etc. But is this baby the potato that needs to stretch its roots in the unaccustomed earth of a home made by American parents? Would that be as awful a thing for that child as the lady in Brasilia seems to think? I can't help but think that a home filled with love is more important than what language this child grows up to speak.
Tomorrow's a new day and we'll see what it brings.
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