When I was pregnant with my first biological child, I wasn’t apprehensive at all. I was so elated that I was becoming a mother. It was all I’d wanted to do since I was very young, and it was a time in my life when I knew I was right where I was supposed to be. I knew it would be hard and that there would be difficult times, but I felt a real peace about it. I even had grand ideas about my labor and delivery and what that would look like - and then I had a 19-hour labor that ended with a broken tail bone and the most beautiful baby boy I’d ever seen - a beautiful baby boy who did not know how to sleep for many years. But those memories faded quickly, and the baby grew, and soon we had baby #2 on the way.
This time I became cocky as pregnancy was “old hat” now. I was not a newbie anymore - I had experience. I went into the delivery room still feeling cocky. But when the Pitocin kicked, and reality set in…I got scared. I realized that, instead of spending the last nine months humbly looking towards this birth, I had been cocky and proud. Of course, I had prayed for my baby and had prepared for her, but the actual birth part? I had forgotten about that. And the first few weeks of no sleep? I kind of forgot about that too. All of a sudden, I remembered that this was going to be HARD. But then I held that beautiful baby girl and took a deep breath, and we moved forward into those hard days and years and formed our new normal once again.
I always compare our first two adoptions in much the same way. The first time I felt so much peace, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt we were right where God wanted us to be. I was willing to learn, and read, and talk, and listen. And when our daughter came home, it is was hard, but it was such a sweet time. It was later that things got hard - really hard - and then better and then hard again. Just like life!
As we jumped into our second adoption (only six months after coming home), I became cocky - like with my second pregnancy - because I knew this process. This was, once again, “old hat” for me. When people asked me the questions, and I knew the answers. I enjoyed being on “that side” of the process. Even when we got to China I was overly confident even up to the very moment before we received our daughter. And then someone in our group gasped and said “Stacy! There she is!” And sure enough, there she was - a teenager who couldn’t speak English, and who used a wheelchair. The panic began to set in, and I suddenly realized how hard this was, and this had the potential to be so much harder. I started to cry, mostly on the inside (the outward sobbing would come later). I squelched the urge to run. I wanted to scream, “WAIT! I need more time...I’m not ready yet!” But much like labor, the time had come, and there was no turning back. At the end of the day I had a beautiful new daughter. And like holding a newborn baby and wondering what in the world to do, I sat in a hotel room across from a sweet, scared teenager who was also screaming on the inside, “WAIT! I’m not ready yet!” Bless her heart, instead of a meal of Chinese food she’d been accustomed to, we ended up eating instant oatmeal in our room and cold pizza from Pizza Hut. We were all so overwhelmed. But as day one became day two, and then day three, we began to miraculously feel our way, and we began to communicate! Our relationship moved from a newborn phase to a toddler phase and so on. It’s still a process of two steps forward and sometimes one step back - sometimes ten steps back. Each day we wake up and say yes to each other and yes to being a family again, even on the hard days.
Two years ago, as we started our third adoption process, I experienced a new feeling - the same joy and peace of saying yes when we were asked to, and the same fun of expecting a new family member, but now also the deep understanding of the need to be humble. The need to pray for the specifics of what I knew we would need upon coming home, and knowing of the hard to come but also understanding that each day will bring growth and change and what things look like today is not what they will look like in a year. It is a joy to talk with new and expecting adoptive parents and share what I’ve learned both about the process and the coming home and the varying experiences we’ve had parenting our children. My attitude is much different now though - I’m no expert - I’ve still got so much to learn. I’m thankful to the Lord for His mercy on my prideful heart and for teaching me daily - through my children - to lean not on my understanding, but instead to follow him.
- Stacy Melton Huff
