I Was Carrying You In My Heart

"The sickness I did not suffer.
The weight I did not gain.
The maternity clothes I did not wear.
My body felt no pain.
I wasn’t there at your birth
For we were worlds apart
You may not have been of my womb
But I was always carrying you.......carrying you in my heart."

I found this poem on another adoption blog and just loved the words! I'm really getting excited about meeting Maia for the first time and being a mommy again! In so many ways, I really do feel as if I've been carrying Maia in my heart all these long months:)

I have to share something just amazing about God's timing and how He brought Maia to us. M and I were talking the other day about how we ever got started on our adoption journey, and when it really started. We never gave it much thought until now that our first conversations about adopting started in 2005. We went out to dinner for our anniversary in March 2005, and that was the first time I brought up the idea to M that I would really like to adopt. M was very hesitant to even talk about it, but I kept bringing up all evening long. Finally, M decided he would "think" about it, but I could see in his eyes that he probably wouldn't. I remember bringing up the topic of adopting a few more times until finally I realized M just really wasn't ready. I was really struggling, but I decided to begin praying. That was in the summer of 2005. Maia was born in June 2005!!

I poured my heart out to God for over a year, asking Him to open M's heart toward adopting. It was a very difficult year for me, but God was faithful. In October 2006, on an ordinary Sunday afternoon, M sat down with me and said he was ready to adopt. Maia was then about 16 months old, and about to have a third surgery in China. She was nowhere healthy enough at that time to be adopted and was not yet on a waiting child list. We didn't even know our daughter had already been born. We started our adoption journey, seeking a healthy baby girl. Of course, God knew all along that what we wanted and what He had in store were two very different things.

When the situation in Vietnam fell apart in December 2007, we prayed long and hard for God to guide our steps. We contacted Homeland Adoptions in December 2007 and talked to them a long while about their special needs adoptions. Maia was then 2 1/2 years old, and soon to be added to the waiting child list at Homeland. In January 2008, we took a leap of faith and decided we would actively look for a child with special needs. This was a few short weeks before Maia's file was released to our agency. We got "the call" from Homeland Adoptions on a Saturday night in March that a new file had come, and Homeland was wondering "would we be interested in Xi He Su?". The file we opened a few days later was our beautiful Maia!

When I look back over our journey, of how our hearts were opened and changed over the past three years, I see the beauty of God's timing so well. How amazing that I began praying for a child through adoption just before Maia was born......and how amazing that God prepared us for the idea of adopting a child with special needs by closing the door to Vietnam (at least for awhile:)........and how amazing that Maia wasn't even available for adoption until our hearts were ready to embrace her fully! I guess He had it all worked out from the beginning after all:)