All our anxious waiting has concluded in a cloud of heartbreaking disappointment once again. As the time of the baby's delivery grew near, no one was able to contact our birth mother. Still, based on her previous patterns of interaction, it was believed that she was likely to contact us a the last minute after she was at the hospital. So, we clung to that hope while battling the desperation and terrible sinking feeling building up inside us.
Thursday morning Nate decided to not go into work. Our minds were focused on one thing, and we listened anxiously for a phone call to bring us news. In attempt to get out and distract ourselves, we returned to the scenic drive we had transversed that previous Sunday. This time we climbed down the cliffs to the rocky beach below. It had looked so beautiful from above, but once we were there we found it less appealing. It was covered with rotting seaweed and buzzing with flies. Still, we walked along and took a few pictures as we waited. And waited. Hoping for good news while it became less and less likely with each passing minute.
Our intense wait came to a close later as we approached Long Beach. A phone call from our emotional social worker, who not long ago went through a similar experience, confirmed our worst fears. Nothing had been heard from our birth mother, and no one had been able to reach her by any means. We were told there was not any reason for us to wait in California any longer, but that we should probably just head home. Overcome with a wave of grief, we weren't sure what to do. I found myself barely able to force myself to respond to the texts of friends and family who were nearly as anxious as us for news. Feeling as though I would drown in the terrible emotions raging inside me, I felt unable to act on much of anything. Not feeling like doing much of anything, we continued to the beach and watched tiny waves roll in across the smooth ripples of sand as we walked barefoot along the water. We stood there trying to process our feelings as we observed the serene world around us: the indistinct cruise ships docked in the harbor, the few scattered people out to enjoy time on the otherwise empty beach, the distant pelicans diving headlong into the water, a sand piper running about in search of food. Through the gray haze we could see some sort of resort built on an island just off the shore. The world around us was distant, unaware of the tragedy and grief we were experiencing.
I don't know how long we stayed at the beach, but the pain stayed with us long after that and remains still. However, we left the next day to head to northern California, where we had plans to meet up with Austin and be with Nate's family for Thanksgiving. Austin had succeeded in being "brave" and flying to California on his own so that we could meet him there. Distracted by the excitement of various events and of being with grandparents, cousins, and other family, his shock and disappointment at the news of our failed adoption was brief when we first told him. However, a week later after we returned home, he broke down in tears at church. And occasionally since I have seen his own sorrow come through amid the otherwise normal activities of our day to day lives.
We all feel the loss. I have found it incredibly difficult every time I go someplace again or doing something again, particularly the first time since being back. Going those places and doing those things that I had envisioned doing with a new baby are now painful without having that baby there. These things remind me of my crushed dreams and unfulfilled anticipations. I have had difficulty thinking much about Christmas activities and traditions I usually love, and what little we have done to decorate has been done half-heartedly. I often feel like I am wading through a viscous sea of emptiness. At other times it is as though I am shrouded in some sort of stupefying fog...I seem to forget to do the most basic things. I have experienced many of the same feelings that I had with our
previous failed adoption. Somehow this one has been all the more difficult in many respects though not only because it is the second time this has happened to us this year, but also since it felt like it was so close to working until the last minute. We even made all sorts of plans for it, went out to California for it, had everyone including the social workers believing it was going just fine...just to have the birth mother drop off the face of the earth. Now, just over three weeks later, despite all sorts of efforts to locate her, still no on knows where she is. The social workers believe that something happened last minute that changed everything for her, but no one knows what. And we probably will never know either.
It is so frustrating to become the financial support for a birth mother and to work to support her in whatever other ways possible as well, and then not even receive the decency of her explanation when she fails to place her baby with your family as she had been promising to do for months...when she just disappears with the child that she stated that she didn't have the means or desire to care for herself. It leaves me with a hundred questions and concerns that will probably never be answered or addressed.
It is also so frustrating to have spent so much money, time, and effort on adoption and to still have ultimately not obtained our goal. We now have to start over yet again in our efforts to be matched with a birth mother and then yet again hope and pray that things work out in our favor.
Still, we are trying to move forward and trust that the Lord has a plan for us and our family, even though we don't know or understand what that plan is. I am currently serving as a Primary teacher at church, and this year I have been grateful for the many lessons about early church members and the pioneers who overcome so many seemingly insurmountable obstacles and numerous gut-wrenching griefs. I have been so grateful for their incredible examples of fortitude and enduring faith amid terrible trials. I have also been reminded of the early efforts made by those church members to build the Salt Lake City Temple. They went to so much work to lay that first firestone foundation that they had to bury to hide it from a hostile US army on its way to the area. It must have been incredibly frustrating to those saints when they unburied their work to discover cracks in that stone foundation and come to realize they would have to start over. They had spent four years of time and effort to dig and create that foundation, which must have felt like such a waste to them upon realizing that that foundation would be worthless. However, they did not abandon their efforts, but re-doubled them to create an even better granite foundation, and then to go on and complete a beautiful, holy, and magnificent temple.
And so, just as God indeed had much good in store for those saints who sacrificed and lost so much, I believe God has something in mind for us too. We just don't know what it is yet. And for that matter, though I probably will never know what it is, I believe he also has a plan for those children who we anticipated joining our family but whose futures are now completely out of our hands. God does not forget any of His children.
I also must say that I have been really surprised by the amount of support that has been shown to us by sympathetic friends and family. I am so grateful for the many texts, phone calls, visits, flowers, and other such things that have come our way. Not everyone is so fortunate to have such understanding people in their lives, and these actions have brought us the comfort of knowing that others recognize our heartache and are praying and hoping for the best for us as well.
