You're Where You Are Supposed To Be

"I've never posted a black and white photo on here before... It feels fitting today. It's a gray morning in LA, my mood fits in perfectly. I've been trying to think of what to write, or how to explain in one succinct post all that's happened. There isn't actually a way.

The twins left our home yesterday. I started to write "our twins" but I deleted it-- corrected myself. They were never really ours. Even though that's what we were told, even though they put them into my arms in a hospital and asked "Do you have names picked out Mommy?" Turns out the bio family was always in the picture, turns out they were truly foster babies, not adoption babies, and maybe in a desperate effort to find someone to care for them, they left out the details. The really essential details. So much has happened in the last month. So much life altering, soul shredding, hardest of the hard things. I'll explain it all to you when I have the words. Today I don't have the words. Today is dark and gray. But I thought you should know. My sweet friends who have prayed with us and cried with us and were as excited to hear we'd gotten adoptive placement as we were. Our #adoptionjourney has taken a turn we never saw coming. And I'm sad. I'm so freaking sad I want to crawl into a corner like a wounded animal and cry and cry.

But there are still babies here: three beautiful boys who are looking to us and right now, in real time, learning how to manage sadness. This might be the most important lesson we teach them out of this whole process. This is how you experience sadness. This is how you hold it in your hands, and your heart, how you let yourself feel it's weight. This is how it will make you stronger. This is how your experience with sadness will give you a heart for others pain. And this, my sweet boys, is how you reach for joy even when it's foggy and gray.

Today is gray but I know how blessed we are to have our boys, our marriage and access to $9 Sauvignon blanc at our local grocery store. We will be OK. The twins will be OK. We will add the memory of this gray dark day to the pile of others that make us who we are.

To say that my heart breaks for Rachel is an understatement. It seems that crappy stuff happens to us on the same days. This past week has been an emotional roller coaster and I have been trying to make it not seem that way. Not just on this blog but even in my own mind. I think as humans we have this want to make everyone believe that we are okay. That even though we're in pain we hide it with a smile. Like when stub your toe and it hurts like you can't believe and you tell the person who asks if your okay that you're fine. That is this week for me. Ever since Monday night I have had a pain in my stomach that I have never felt before. This feeling as if I am going to throw up at any moment. I felt lonely in a way that I never had. I truly was alone. I've lost weight like it's my day job. I haven't been eating much this week and if I'm honest I've been in bed for most of the week. That's probably why I've read two books in three days.
Some people glide right into new seasons. I do not. I hate change and the fear of the unknown is enough to cripple me sometimes. I've ignored God and put him in a box. I haven't been on the best of terms with him lately. It's funny how we always go to God when you need something. I started asking a bunch of questions. Did I make a wrong decision? Am I where I'm supposed to be? Should I have done that? Should I go back to my church?
Shortly after I saw the Rachel Hollis post and wondered what was going on with both of our lives this comes up.

"You cannot rush good things. You are exactly where you are supposed to be. It's all happening right on time." -Allison Fallon

Coincidence? Maybe. Probably not. My heart swelled up and I breathed the first sigh of relief that I had in a while. When we put God in a box we feel at our loneliness. He's always there but we can't feel that abundant love that he wants to give us. We are never truly alone when God we let God work in our life. Maybe both Rachel and I needed to hear that quote today.

DFTBA
-AB