Wrangler Dani

We met Adelay at 24 hours old. We didn’t get custody until 48 hours, and during that exhausting 24-hour period we were strong for each other and for her. The NICU nurses referred to us as “mom” and “dad” but we knew it could always be different, that maybe this little perfect person wouldn’t actually be ours, even though she’d captured our hearts.

When we checked out of the hospital and had official custody, we relaxed a little. We started making promises to her – in the wee hours of the morning when she was lonely or hungry or scared – we would sit in the dark and rock her back to sleep, whispering, “I’m here, baby girl. I’ve got you, you’re OK.”

We’ve continued to promise our love and protection and hope to her over the last few months. We’ve told her how beautiful she is, how loved she is, how we aren’t going anywhere.

We finalized the adoption two days ago, and suddenly those promises feel different – everything feels different. Because now we can make promises that are within our power to keep – no judge or lawyer or social worker can alter our relationship to her. Now, when we whisper, “I’m here, baby girl,” we know that we are here, and so is she, for the rest of our lives, that we get to be a family with no lingering worries and no qualifiers.

Because that’s what family is – isn’t it? We all have friends that we say we “love like family”, and all we mean by that is that we won’t give up on them. We can’t be hurt enough to make us turn our backs, we can’t be annoyed enough to not call, we can’t be repulsed enough to ever stop praying for them. Family is love, no matter what. Through any circumstance or difficulty, through any discomfort or disagreement or hurt feelings, we still love them, because they’re family. This why God uses the illustration of adoption and family (children of God) to describe us – he loves us even when we are huge disappointments, when we make epic mistakes, when we have tantrums in the middle of Target or run continuously late or forget to wipe our feet at the door. This is the promise we made to Addy – to be here, to be family, to love no matter what life does next. Now we get to keep that promise and it is such an honor.

Today I’m grateful for promises kept – for how God loves us and how we get to love each other. I’m grateful that we get to make these promises to our baby girl; what a privilege it is to promise our love, to whisper her name and sooth her cries as only mommy and daddy can.