The Weight.

Part Two.

I think I’ve written these words before, but I find it funny that the days that change your life rarely announce themselves as such.

There is no parade, no ticket stamped, no actions of grandeur to mark the fork in the road. Of all the red notifications we get on our phones, I wish there was one that sent a small text reading, “Today is the day that changes your life, but it will feel like any other day. Pay close attention.”

The gentle shift that was changing the course of our life happened in baby steps. Thank God. I can’t imagine the state I would be in if it had been any other way, because even the slow progression of baby steps still feels like we were smacked in the face with change and objections to our own plans on a weekly basis.

“We walked into a brown brick building that was hidden behind an old factory off the side of a highway and waited for a very overworked and underpaid social worker to call our names for fingerprints. I sat across from Kyle at a leaning card table with three legs and began to count the dead roaches that lay belly up in the corner.

Seven.

The blinds were dusty and hanging on by a thread as a hand-written poster on the adjacent wall reminded me to smile at a stranger that day. We knew that we lived in the poorest state with the most broken child welfare system in the country. The evidence of such statistics presented to us now over Zoom calls describing child molestation, and disheveled state-run offices. I didn’t feel above the situation, quite the opposite. We didn’t consider ourselves too good for it. We were only collapsing with exhaustion at having made this decision so quickly, surprised at our arrival here. And terribly nervous for what was to come.

I cleared my throat to speak. “If someone had told me this is where we would end up, I wouldn’t have believed them. If anyone had mentioned this to me years ago, I would have politely told them this is not for us. Kyle, what the hell are we doing here?”

 He told me he wasn’t sure. Our confidence was wavering, but none of our alarm bells were going off. Tears collected in the corner of my eyes just as the social worker returned our drivers licenses and social security cards.”

A few days later we heard back from our social worker to let us know that we’d been approved by the state and now the only thing to do was wait for a call. “My supervisor did want me to once again go over the difference between fostering and adoption,” she said.

 Why?

She began to describe my bookshelf that stood next to the window of the spare room. She couldn’t help but notice the teddy bear and family relics. Pictures of Kyle’s grandmother sat in pink frames that overlooked our collections of board games on the lower shelves.

“The room is so sweet,” she noted. But she was alarmed that it all seemed too personal. Too homey. Too familial. As if we were preparing for our child, not just a child.

“Most placements may not stay longer than a week, Mrs. Henry. They just need a warm bed and a stable home.”  I told her I had no problem knowing that a child would spend a night surrounded by family things. Our things. If I saw no issue with a child playing with the teddy bear that was handstitched by my great great-grandmother, then the state of Mississippi should see no problem with it either.”

Above is an excerpt from Having A Baby & Other Things I’m Bad At:

short stories about living life with infertility now available on Amazon.

It’s taken a while for me to have the confidence to explain that...well…we knew we were preparing for our child. When God calls you to do something it won’t make a lot of sense to other people, it may not even make sense to you—you just do it anyway. The dreams that God kept sending me also came with a spiritual promise and a vision.

I could feel God saying, “Just show up and do the paperwork and I will send you your boy.”

Just show up. Do paperwork. Prayers answered.

photography by Ashley Prewitt

I can assure you that the last fifteen months of our lives were nowhere near as simple as I’m making them out to be. So much of our story is intertwined with his. Our brokenness of miscarriage, and rejection, and loss collided with his origin story of hurt, and that is probably all I will put in black and white for now regarding his background. So many people love a happy ending, they want to know the full story, and usually what I tell them is plain and simple.

“It’s sad and not good.”

Can you imagine a happy story that involves the child welfare system? That’s an oxymoron.

But the intricacies of how he came to be our son, our Samuel is where God shines. And the day we first laid eyes on our boy; I swear there must have been fireworks in Heaven.

“We need a sign,” I told my husband for days leading up to our first meeting. Signs.

I feel like I’m always looking for a sign. A feeling, a coincidence, a God-wink, a number sequence, a serendipitous moment. I’m on the constant hunt for a sense of fireworks in my chest when something is right, when we are on the right path. Something from the universe for me to cling to—something from God that says, “Stay here, this is where I want you.”

For years I’d dreamt of the weight of a child on my chest. I imagined how enormously whole I would feel rocking a baby, bouncing a toddler, and smelling their sweet breath as they slept in the crook of my neck. The epitome of motherhood is found as a woman holds a baby with ease and the child lays their head on her chest and shoulders.

That’s it. That’s the sign.

“Kyle, I can’t care if this takes forever. I can’t worry right now if people judge us or if we must fight a broken system or worry about anything else. I just need to know the boy we meet today will trust us enough to lay his head on my chest.”

And so unceremoniously, like the closing of a door, like the beginning of any other day, like the opening of a curtain—back and forth, back and forth—like the ordinary days that weave together the moments that change you forever, the hour came, and we would meet him for the first time.

It was hot.

I was nervous.

Kyle was impatient.

The social worker was late.

And I was pregnant.

We were in a park in Jackson, Mississippi and had been pacing for almost an hour. I was facing my husband when I heard a car pull up. I turned around to see a woman place a small boy on the ground in front of us. He waddled towards me in clothes and shoes that were a bit too big, he smelled like spaghetti, and I breathlessly whispered to my husband,

“Oh God, that’s him. That’s our son.”

We delicately introduced ourselves to him and let him show us the way. We played on the slide, he hated the swing set, and we walked in circles for over an hour. As we sat down to talk logistics with the social worker, I made my lap available, moving my purse to the sidewalk and trying to act casual and not gawk at how beautiful he was. My head was turned towards my husband, and I was staring into the sun over my shoulder when I felt the world stop spinning.

The weight. His weight. I couldn’t breathe. Thank you, Jesus.

In a matter of seconds, he had found my lap, curled into a ball, and trusted me enough to lay his head on my chest. So naturally as if he’d done it a thousand times before. Kyle and I locked eyes and shared a moment that I will remember in vivid detail for the rest of my life. Just a few moments later he would walk to Kyle, lift his arms so patiently as if knowing he would pick him up, and he laid his head on Kyle’s shoulders, too. That weight. We soaked in every second.

That was the day we met our son.

It wasn’t pretty, it was painted in a shade of sadness that can only be known by loss. But God can restore the most broken things and make them beautiful.

We stood to say our goodbyes and I tried to act calm as I strapped him into a car that wouldn’t be taking him to our home that day. I stayed in the parking lot waving him off long after they turned the corner. Kyle and I climbed into his truck and sat speechless for several minutes.

I rubbed my belly for moment acknowledging her presence, too.

Then the overwhelming sensation of time consumed me.

Like the firing of a gun to tell marathon runners it is time to sprint, there was a bang and I understood that we had just begun and we had a very, very long way to go.