Wrangler Dani

A while back I wrote about the “drip, drip, drip of unmet expectations” on this adoption expedition. I have tried to come up with other metaphors but have roundly failed – the only way to describe the utter spareness and ache of our long wait of adoption is by the image of water dripping on a rock: endless, cold, damp, incessant. Yet, despite that dreary picture, it’s not all there is, because all around the rock life is blooming – there’s a fern bending over the beleaguered stone, there are flowers poking up beside, there’s moss and trees and lovely sounds and smells all around – the water that drips with such depressing insistence brings life and hope and beauty in its wake.

Now our baby girl is home. We have another month or so to go before finalization, but everything is progressing well. She is ours and we are hers in every way – I know what her cries mean, what makes her smile, when she’s hungry. She follows us with her eyes and responds to our voices. We have a daughter in the sense that every parent has a child – what a gift!

What started as a drip, drip, drip has become a thunderous storm. While I ached at the depressing spareness of the space between drips, now I gasp for air as water rushes full force over me. I am overjoyed at her presence and in love with her more every day, but then I sigh at the state of my kitchen or ache to get more accomplished at work and wonder if I’m an awful mom – the rain we prayed for came with a vengeance and I dare to want a sunny day instead?

What grounds me is the knowledge that only God brings water to my parched or drowning spirit. Only he makes either the desert, the drip or the flood worth living through, worth swimming across, worth celebrating. Because every mom – no, every person – feels this way. We ache for change and than once it arrives we ache again. I am more fulfilled as a wife and mother than perhaps any role I’ve had, and yet I still wonder what I should do with the other pieces of me, the creative side, the business owner side, the writer tapping away while the baby sleeps, yammering on about rocks and drips and whatnot.

I guess I just wanted to tell you that parenting is just as lovely and blossoming as I hoped it would be, that I am fulfilled and in love and oh-so-grateful. But there’s another side to this which every mom knows – that I worry about my girl. I am tired. I sometimes just want to write or work without watching the clock for when she will awake and need me again. It takes some getting used to, moving from a drip, drip to a Seattle winter, and I’m recognizing that the best way to find grace in a storm is to give it. So I’m going to marvel at this awesome baby girl. I’m going to watch in awe as Adam, arguably the best daddy on the planet, loves her so well. I’m going to rejoice and be glad and thank God for rain – and I’m going to wear my wellies and offer my umbrella to others, because I now know how it feels to need a little break from the wonderful rain now and then, and to need a friend to help you dance in it along the way.