Wrangler Dani

(This was originally published on my Substack. You can subscribe here.)

The other night we watched our friends’ kids for them and the backyard was full of laughter. They are older, easier maybe, although who’s to say that parenting is ever easy – maybe it’s only easy if they are someone else’s.

My heart was light – I wanted to give this gift and, selfishly, it’s a way for me to playact my dream – I’d always wanted a big family. I loved the joy of a backyard full of kids, my husband acting as head big kid and ringleader for a raucous game of corn hole. Even as I chuckled at the silliness, however, I had a sinking feeling in my heart: I don’t think my dream is coming true. We have two kids and both of them were fought for, loved with tenacity by us and our community and their birth families. It feels like swimming upstream to think we could do it again, let alone again and again. It feels like too much love to rally.

Oh yes, did I tell you? We’re adopting again.

We’ve been ready and waiting for a third child since last summer. In the meantime, it feels like my heart is calcifying under the uncleaned gunk of unanswered patience and unmet expectations. Although yesterday I saw a grandma and mom and kids in the parking lot of the grocery store and I teared up behind my sunglasses, so I guess my heart’s not completely caked over yet. I have had many dreams, but none are as real or as precious as the dream of family – a family we choose to love because that is the heart of adoption; we welcome in the non-related and say, come, be, you can’t lose this love now.

We keep asking God why he gave us this love for adoption only to place us in limbo. I am irrationally upset about the slow pace of this dream, even though when asked by caring friends I pretend to be faithfully sanguine and I say what I know is true: God knows; if it’s meant to be it’ll be; I am not in control. This could be seen as trite platitudes but it’s actually the hardest work, to believe in goodness amongst the smoldering wrecks of unrealized dreams.

I am so breathtakingly saddened for the expecting families who are scared of adoption, who have heard stories of hardship and not redemption. I really believe that there is no such thing as an unwanted child, but not everyone does. This reality breaks my heart.

If I honestly believe there is enough love to go around, what about relational lack of love, when I am snubbed or ignored or treated with disdain? What about the pain and injustice all around us, as we protect our possessions and worry about our future, as though we are in control of anything? I wonder, could it be? Am I crazy for believing in a world made new with hope?

What some might see as Pollyanna platitudes are grappled with and hard-won and I will not give them up. I fight to believe that I am not defined by the roles I have or the roles I wish I had, because roles are not callings, although we get the two confused. Love is messy – every good story has conflict. My story isn’t beautiful because it’s perfect, just as my kids aren’t loved because they never disobey. They are loved because they are included, wanted, seen. Because love is big enough even for toddler (or 37-year-old) tantrums.

Although it’s daunting and fearful, it’s not too much love to rally. I will proclaim this again and again: there’s no such thing.