Maybe I should've just gone to bed....

It seems the most inspired time for me to write is either in the early morning or at night when the house is quiet. Jeremiah's been asleep for a few hours already and I'm slowly learning to appreciate these hours of solitude, but still not sure if it's better for me to just go to bed. It has been a pretty introspective day and I'm both exhausted and inspired by it. I was talking with a friend today about the concept of what is 'enough'. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, I experienced a number of nightmares about feeling authentic in my new role, and I've been surprised by my sensitivity to new situations. Before Jeremiah came I would wince when people talked about how fertile they were (that still kinda hurts), how they weren't even trying to get pregnant, etc. But now, when all I want to do is prevent anything from diminishing how I'm feeling as a new mom, I find myself hearing words and phrases that stinkin' hurt! If anyone else asks me about Jeremiah's 'mom' in reference to the birth mother, I don't know what I'll do. I usually smile and continue in the conversation, as though I didn't skip a beat, all the while wanting to scream at them and say, "I'M his mom, you jerk!"

I was sitting in a group of young moms the other day, not actively engaged in the conversation, but included by default because I was in the room. The moms were talking about who their children resembled the most, them or their husbands, when one of the moms said, "Isn't is great when your child looks like YOU?" Of course she had no idea that I was wincing inside, nor was her comment even directed at me, but it still hurt like hades. I KNEW these conversations would happen someday, but I still felt completely unprepared for how to handle my emotions in response. I don't know how to stop looking at my friend's beautiful pregnant belly and not ache that I didn't get to carry Jeremiah that way. I do not dwell on it, (for what good would that do?) but I do still tend to grieve it now and again. So I choose not to start preparing my heart for the what-ifs down the road. I could.......oh, I could.....the idea of Jeremiah needing more of a mother than what he will get from me is terrifying. What if he wants to track down his birth mother someday because he feels something is missing, that I wasn't enough? I know that it might be a reality, and that I have years before it could potentially happen, and yes, that God will provide the ability to not only endure it, but support Jeremiah in that pursuit. But I can tell you right now that I do not like it, and never will. So there is a prime example of why I do not allow myself to go down the what-if road. Our life has finally seemed to settle down from all the events of last year, so why do I feel the need to stir up more stuff?

I hate to admit it, but I think I thrive in drama, as draining as it can be. But you know what's really cool? The phrase "in the meantime" no longer exists in this household. I spent years of my life "in the meantime" waiting for my purpose to begin. Not that having Jeremiah defines me, but God's given me purpose with one of the most important roles in this sweet boy's life. I knew I was made for more than what I was doing, but the wait was driving me insane. Hindsight, incredibly irritating in it's deferred arrival, changes everything. My wait is not just my story, but Jeremiah's. God still wants this story told and I'm just trying to figure out how He wants me to tell it. So in the meantime (haha), I just get to enjoy every single second of this incredible baby boy.

Jeremiah giggled for the first time a few weeks ago, and both Lee and I were there to hear it. Neither of us wants to miss a single thing when Jeremiah is changing so much. I've been singing a few silly songs we've created, and wonder as I sing them if they'll be ones he'll think back on someday.

I just love him, just absolutely love him. I hope that's enough.

Undeniably Mommy....

I don't know exactly when the switch flipped, but the nightmares have stopped. For weeks after Jeremiah's arrival I had recurring dreams involving Marisol (the birth mother) and a perpetual feeling of invalidation. They wouldn't be exactly the same dream, but more of a recurring theme where Jeremiah was crying and suddenly Marisol would walk in, pick him up and he would instantly calm. I would look at the way they were interacting and feel incredibly resigned, thinking, "Well, of course he'd respond to her like that........" I would wake up ready to sob, struggling to identify myself as Jeremiah's mother.......no, Jeremiah's REAL mother. Years upon years of keeping my dream of motherhood at bay resulted in weeks of this battle in my heart. My old tendencies wanted to remain guarded, ready for heartbreak, but life was not slipping away from me. Jeremiah was (and is, obviously) HERE and the only mother he knows, and will ever know, is ME. You'd think I'd just be ready to throw away how I used to live and think but it wasn't quite that easy. I basically had to give myself permission to love uninhibitedly, vulnerable and raw.



Sometimes I would wonder as I held him if he would be the same if Marisol had kept him. Would he cry the same way? Would his voice sound different? Would he smile as much? I honestly don't know why these things would ever enter my mind.......but they did, and as much as it hurt to even think them I couldn't deny my curiosity.



All of that has ended, thank God, and there is no denying who's Mommy around here. The other day as I was getting Jeremiah dressed in his pajamas he started kicking his legs, cooing so loudly that I started to giggle. He caught my eye and smiled so big, and got even more excited as he talked. There was so much undeniable joy in his face when he looked at me that I started to weep.......... "Ohhhhhh.......THIS!" I thought to myself, "THIS is what I've waited for.."

Like I said before, I don't know when the switch flipped but I'm just grateful it did. I'm still in as great a journey to trust as ever before. Trying to stay at home as much as possible and still pay for all our expenses is proving to be an extremely difficult task. I don't know why I thought we'd get a respite after Jeremiah arrived and maybe what this is revealing about me is that my mind will always be festering about something. How annoying.

Merry Christmas!

4 weeks already

I think I've just entered into that time in life where you don't want to ever blink. Time moves too fast. Jeremiah is a month old!

I must have exceeded the word limit on my last entry (I had written all about the time at the hospital and it got bumped off the site....grrrrr!), so I've been wondering how best to fill in the gaps but not bore with details.

The last thing I want to do is lose the awe of what has happened, to callous myself to the story because of the monotony of life. But life has a way of just sucking out the extraordinary.......if you let it. These last few weeks have been surreal, but challenging as emotions surfaced I wasn't prepared for.

Because we had to wait for such a long time I placed such anticipation on the fulfillment I would receive. True, the desire is fulfilled, but I also believed that my seven years of waiting stored up all the caretaking energy I would need. Not so much. I told myself that I would never complain; it didn't matter how tired I was or how many times during the night I woke up, I would love every single second of it. Did I somehow believe that I would no longer be human once becoming a mother? That whole never-complaining thing lasted for all of 4 days! I am loving every second of it, but I am being challenged every second of it as well.

We are now out of the 'legal risk' period. Marisol's parental rights were legally terminated over a week ago, and now the birth father registry has to be checked to see if Jeremiah's birth father has listed himself on it. It would mean that we would have to go through the process of terminating those rights as well. If he is not listed, then we are completely in the clear and can start the finalization process, which typically takes about 3 months in the state of Minnesota. These are just formalities for us because we have absolutely no worries about any hurdles from this point on. God's made sure to communicate that to us.

A few weeks back I attended a prayer service at church where our pastor read the passage of scripture we would be praying through. It was Ephesians 3:14-21, which has special significance to me. It is Paul's prayer for the church in Ephesus, but became my prayer as Lee and I struggled in ministry and started our infertility voyage all those years ago.

"When I think of the wisdom and scope of God's plan I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he would give you mighty inner strength through his holy spirit. And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God's marvelous love. And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high and how deep his love really is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Then you will be filled with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

Now Glory be to God! By his mighty power at work within us, he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope. May he be given glory in the church and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever through endless ages. Amen." (NLT)

As I sat in church reading and praying God said, "See, Tiffany? Don't you see now what I was doing?" The message could have been, "You ungrateful child, are you happy now?"

But there was grace where there could have been judgment.

Out of God's love for me, for Lee, and especially for Jeremiah we have become this ever-anticipated family. I wish I had waited better. All those years of praying and weeping and questioning why God would allow us to suffer through such tender disappointment resulted in an incredible outpouring that was infinitely more than we ever could have hoped. Can I ever again doubt God's love for me? I keep remembering a comment my mom made to me several times over the last few years when I would watch God bless other people while I suffered. "Tiffany, do you think God loves you any less than He loves them?"

That's true for all of us, regardless of the struggle.

"'For I know the plans I have for you', declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a future and a hope.'" Jeremiah 29:11

The whole story.

I've wondered a million times about the best way to tell this story, but I think what's best is to just start and hope that the pieces fall into place along the way. I'm going to back up to about mid-July, when we were in process of waiting on a birth mother from California to decide if she indeed wanted us to adopt her baby. While that opportunity was still lingering we received a phone call from my mom one evening after she had returned home from work, and I could tell by the apprehension in her voice that she had some trepidation about what she was going to say. She had heard about another young girl who was pregnant and didn't plan to keep the baby. Would this be something we would at all be interested in pursuing? My response was not positive. It was more like, "Are you kidding me? I'm sick and tired of hearing about these girls, when none of them are actually serious about going through with it." I did not want to tell Lee. I remember looking over at him after I hung up with my mom, feeling this weight in my stomach thinking, 'Can I put him through this conversation again? How much can we take?'

"What now?" Lee asked me. ( I think he already knew what was up by the look on my face).

"You don't want to know," I replied.

"Well?"

So I began to tell him what my mom had told me. By the end of the story both of us were stinking MAD. We were trying not to lump every birth mother into a heaping pile of indecision, unstability, and mistrust but disappointment after disappointment can give every girl the same face, the same story, the same heart and we were done.

Our conversation was filled with comments like, "Something just doesn't seem right about this one," and, "Of all the options this one seems the LEAST likely to happen", and, "What's this girl's angle? What does she want?" We ranted, we did a little yelling, but as loud as we voiced our skepticism I could not shake this voice that said, "But what IF? What if this IS the one that works?"

"Quiet!" I remember thinking, "I don't want to wonder!" But it wouldn't go away, and quietly I whispered the 'what if' to Lee. I'd like to say that we came to a wonderful conclusion to trust God and venture once again into the uncertain realm of birth mother conversations, but we blew it off. Not completely, but we didn't entirely embrace the possibility either. We just didn't think about it. For weeks. We thought so little of it that I enrolled for classes through December and scheduled a roofing company to come replace our roof (turns out we had hail damage and only had to pay the deductible -praise God!). So when we got the call that the California situation was closed for us we threw this one out the window as well.

I had just finished the last day of my first week of classes, went out to the truck to head for home and noticed that my mom had tried to call my cell phone like 500 times. When I called her back she sounded a little excited. "I just met Marisol," she told me.

"What?"

"Yeah, Cristina brought her into the clinic today and they're wondering whether or not we're going to do this adoption!"

"Wait.....what?!?"

"Marisol would like to meet you. I did pull up your blog site so she could at least see your picture, but how soon do you think you could come down to the cities to meet?"

"What?!?" ( I know, a bit redundant, but I was a little shocked. After all, hadn't this one seemed the LEAST likely to happen?)

After I stammered out a few unintelligible things we decided to try to meet on Monday, Labor Day. I didn't have classes, and most people (minus Lee) wouldn't be working. My mom confirmed with Cristina that it would indeed work for them and there we were, set to meet.

I drove down to the cities on Monday morning, but before I left had that great conversation with God (check my early September entry for details), and spent the afternoon at my parents' house making flash cards for my nursing class trying not to let the anxiety take over me. I remember standing at the kitchen window, the same one my mom has stood at for countless years waiting for countless people to arrive, watching as Marisol came walking up to the door. She didn't look obviously pregnant, and I had to fight the urge to doubt her situation. She was very sweet, but very timid and all the while I kept thinking, "One wrong move, Tiffany, and you'll have her running out to the car!"

While Cristina assisted my mom in the kitchen Marisol and I found ourselves sitting together in the living room. Me, with my extremely limited Spanish, and Marisol with her limited English managed to actually have a conversation. My sweet Dad caught a picture of us, and it turns out to be the only picture of Marisol we have, so I have to treasure that picture forever even if I do look like a horse in it.

At dinner she sat next to me and I kept shooting glances at her belly, wondering about the baby boy that was there. After dinner she excused herself and Cristina got a chance to fill me in on how they met. I'm sharing it, because I feel like I need to, like God wants it to be told. I do not however want it to communicate negatively in any way about Marisol. Here's my paraphrase of Cristina's story that she told to me that night:


I was working at Hennipen County Medical Center one day and was reaching the end of my shift. I had 15 minutes left before I was supposed to clock out. Now my job only pays in 4 or 8-hour increments, no partial hours or anything. So when a staff member came into the room asking for an interpretor I almost didn't take it, knowing I only had a few minutes left of my shift, but no one else offered, so I did. I didn't realize why I was supposed to be there until I started interpreting for this young girl. She was there to get a referral for an abortion. As the nurse took all her measurements I knew I was supposed to intervene. After the information was collected about how far along Marisol was in her pregnancy the nurse told her that she had one day left before it would no longer be legal to have an abortion in the state of Minnesota. After talking with Marisol the nurse left to go call the abortion clinic across the street to make an appointment for the following morning. I could not stay silent. 'Don't do it, Marisol. Don't kill your baby. God will bless you if you spare the life of your child. You cannot do this- I'll help you. There are lots of people who would love to adopt your baby- don't go through with this abortion.'

I convinced Marisol to come home with me, that we would talk it out and come up with a plan. She agreed to talk with me more about it. I realized that I could have lost my job for intervening like I did, but I knew that Jesus would protect me for doing His will. I told Marisol to meet me outside the front doors because I had to go into the employee area to clock out and get my purse. So I went and did that, grabbed my stuff and went outside, but Marisol was nowhere to be found. She was gone, like gone forever. At that moment everything completely drained out of me and I wept and said, 'God, I did my best to save that baby,' and I prayed for the impossible to happen. I grabbed my car keys and headed to where my car was parked. I was just about to get in when something caught my eye. It was Marisol and she was running.......running back to the front doors where we were supposed to meet! To this day I do not know what made her come back, but she got in the car with me, came to my house and made ME dinner. We talked for hours and I agreed to help her find a family for her baby.

A few days later I went to my chiropractor's appointment and there I overheard Jane talking about your situation to somebody else. Goosebumps went over my entire body and I went up and talked with your mom, saying 'You wouldn't believe this! I just agreed to help this young girl find a family to adopt her baby.........and here we are!

Our boy is HOME!!!

Wow!!! I cannot even begin to explain the utter amazement at what God has done. I'll go into more details later, but wanted to post pictures as soon as we got home.

Jeremiah Nathan Gear was born at 9:52am on Sunday, October 14 (7lbs 19.8" long). He is absolutely beautiful. The most amazing thing is this: I do not remember a beginning of him......it feels like he's always been with me.

Look!!! Look at what God has done!!!

We received a card this afternoon that says this:

JUST THINK

Your SON is here not by chance, but by God's choosing.

His hand formed him and made him the person he is.

God compares him to no one else- he is one of a kind.

Your son will lack nothing that God's grace can't give him.

God had allowed your son to be here at this time in history to fulfill

His special purpose for this generation.-Roy Lessin-

"Everyone shall stand in awe and confess the greatness of the miracles of God...they will realize what amazing things He does." Psalm 64:9

A new due date.

It appears that after meeting with a doula, Marisol's due date is more like the 14th than the 10th. Like a friend of mine said, "You can't change those things NOW!!!" But so it seems that our anxious, 'nothing-will-cure-this-itch-except-going-to-the-hospital' time continues. Fortunately I've had plans for this week that I've been able to continue in, but poor Lee has had nothing to do to pass the time except play Halo, which I am very quickly becoming tired of. There's this beeping sound as the character's energy field is recharging that I could go without hearing for the rest of my life. (Trust me, I already know that I know too much about the game).

But like I said, poor Lee has had nothing to occupy himself with. It's been rainy for weeks now, and the short glimpses of clear skies are spent walking the dogs who, I swear, sense the anticipation in the air. I've never seen them so pent-up, so needy! Walking them is good exercise and a great excuse to get out of the house, but even that doesn't come close to scratching the itch.

We packed a few travel bags and have them sitting on the bedroom floor. I can't take them to the car just yet because I'm partially living out of them, and what else would I have left to do? At least I can pack and repack a bazillion times if I need to find something to do, but once they're in the truck? Well shoot, you can't undo that.

In this wait for the inevitable rush of panic (Lee says, "No panic, Tiffany...." But I say, "Who are we kidding?"), we find ourselves saying to each other, "What should we do with these last few days of 'just us'?" It's hard to believe that from here on out it will never be just the two of us and to be honest, it's bittersweet. We haven't yet tasted the joy of parenthood and family that we've been longing for, but we're not quite ready to change what we've been. I think who we are is worth hanging onto during our venture into parenthood, and I think we're just stubborn enough to see it through. We continue to be challenged with enjoying these last days together all the while thinking, 'For crying out loud, phone. Ring already!'