Saying Good-bye

Today, this year will come to a close. I have mixed emotions about the end of one year and the beginning of another. On the one hand, I love a fresh start, a chance to begin again, an opportunity to make an impossible list of goals and resolutions and try to keep them past February! On the other hand, though, I hate change. At least, I hate the unsettled mysterious nature of change. I'd rather things stay the same, warm and cozy as they've always been.

This coming year will have a great deal of change, and I find myself, in these last moments of 2013, grieving what I must leave behind. There were tears this past week, the first tears in some time. I thought of all that we'd lost, all that we hoped would happen that didn't come to be.

The change that I speak of is good change. We are beginning our first steps toward adoption! We are opening our arms and hearts wide to this beautiful thing that God has planned for us.

But even the most wonderful changes in life can still mean saying good-bye to something else. And even if that something else had with it countless tears and heartbreaks, intertwined with it all was our deepest and most desperate hope. In many ways, I am ready for what lies ahead, ready for joy and laughter and surprise. But I don't feel ready to say good-bye. My heart made a place for what I thought we would have, and that empty space hurts right now.

I wanted to be pregnant. I wanted to see a positive sign on those sticks I've come to hate. I wanted to experience our baby's heartbeat, feel it kick and move, fall in love with it before ever holding it. I wanted healing, for me, for Robby, for our families and friends who have never stopped praying and hoping with us. I wanted to know what our child--half me and half him--would be like. Green eyes like his? Fair like me? Tall, like the both of us? Calm and selfless, or passionate and willful?

Am I crazy to have great hope for what is to come, yet lingering sorrow for what never came to be?

The truth is that at one point, there was no room for the hope of what was to come. Now there is. Yes, my heart made a place for what I thought we would have, and that emptiness hurts. But my heart has also grown, created a space for something I didn't even know I wanted. I don't know exactly how it works, saying good-bye to a dream while welcoming a new one. I don't know how tears of grief and joy can mingle together.

But I do know that Scripture is full of God's promises of something different, something unexpected, something better coming to those who trust Him. And that's something I can walk in with full confidence.