Adoption Awareness Month — So much I could say! I will share this …
As many of you know, Todd and I adopted our two girls from foster care. I remember hugging Haley one night after a tough day with tears in my eyes. Tears of sadness in my heart for what had brought us both together and tears of hope that we could help each other move forward. In many ways, we were two broken people God put together. Todd and I had experienced multiple failures at trying to have a baby, and she’d experienced failure after failure of what a home and family should be. Haley has been loved by all who’ve been a part of her life, though her road was not always smooth. It’s taken a village.
I’ve said to her many times that God has had her since day one. Since Haley’s adoption and certainly through her teen years, there’s a based-on-a-true-story book to be written! Maybe someday we’ll do that together. We’ve held on to love, even when it didn’t feel like love at all. Even when she tried to push us away, we kept loving (along with the hurt.) And when we didn’t get it right as parents (somewhere—deep—inside her, along with the pain) there was still love. We still hang on. Nothing’s picture perfect. In fact, it’s in no why anything that we’d have anticipated. As parents we’ve been hurt to the core, been shocked and shocked again, felt like failures, cried out a hundred questions to God, and wished there was a ‘give up and walk away’ option more than once.
Life’s road isn’t always fair, but along the way, thankfully, there are those undeniable, unexplainable occurrences where without question the only answer is that it had to be God. So in the hardest of times, I keep saying, “God is in this. Somewhere, God is still in this.” He doesn’t leave what he started. I write as a health escape. I started writing Treasure atop the Mountain when we were without children, and I needed a place for my mind to go to get away from all the thoughts in my head. And yet again, in the girls’ teen years—oh how we were so unprepared!—I needed a healthy escape for my brain so I finished the second book Roxie Applesauce. Released in August and dedicated to Haley, it’s fiction. It’s not her story or anyone’s story. I’d started it years ago and it was there to run my emotions through as I grasped for hope (and still do!) in our complicated world. The book’s dedication says: To Haley Angelica Matthews. God has had you since day one! Oh how I’ve repeated this to myself so many times. Because He had her before we had her. And He has her now, when we don’t.
Bless you my girl, and may you always know that You Are Part of a Plan. God’s Plan. God’s Good Plan! When you are down, and when life is too hard, reach for Him. He offers so much more than this world!
I write now, book #3 Get Will, dedicated to Aleya. Yet again, a quest for a safe place for my mind with the message of hope that I need in this season of life!