She Wanted What Was Best For Her Son [million ways to mother]

The weight of love was overwhelming. Witnessing with our eyes and feeling with our souls we experienced the weight of sacrificial love. The room’s air bled tragic love.

How could someone’s tragic loss be our unfathomable gain? How would I ever fully understand this paradox?

This is the boy for whom we had been praying eight long months and for whom we had done countless fundraisers. He was the child our village rallied to support. 

My heart wrapped itself around his mother and her child. Nothing in this world could undo my fierce love for them. How could I not embrace and cherish the one who chose life for our son? How could I love my son, but not the people who gave him life, and placed him in our family?

My great and unexplainable joy was intrinsically encased with her indescribable loss. My understanding of adoption deepened. Our world is so broken and often, so backwards too.

Weakness in my legs forced me to remain sitting on her hospital bed, as I sifted through the realization of how much she loved this boy. As I witnessed her watching him, tending and caring for her baby, I saw how she observed us alongside her child.

I wanted to always have open communication with her. How could we deny her knowing him? Why would we deny him the opportunity to know her, his birth mom? I knew she chose us, after saying no to countless others, but I had no feelings of entitlement to him; I loved him upon meeting him. Seeded into my heart was assurance to be his. Simultaneously, I had peace acknowledging she still had the opportunity to parent, to not sign relinquishment papers.

Feelings of love and humility ran over me. I was not mama. I was potentially mama. I clung to the unexpected calm accompanying this reality.

Read the rest on Million Ways to Mother.