Mama Grief

God has blessed me with the opportunity to be a part of the GriefShare ministry at Fellowship. We start our next cycle on September 6. This group focuses solely on the grief over the loss of a loved one. Over the past few weeks I've found myself wondering if God is working His ways again... not just allowing me to use my own grief journey that He guided me through when my Nana died OR if He has placed me in this group at this exact time so I can relearn the grief process and remind me to lean on HIM during these intense times of Mama Grief.

That is what I've decided to name these new emotions that I know God is using to condition my heart because these are a drop in the bucket of what I'll experience, and what I'll watch others experience, as we move through our adoption.

It is a selfish grief. It is grief for the children my body can no longer carry itself. Grief over knowing I'll never again feel a baby grow and move about in their tiny world within my body. Grief for the children that my body will never feed from itself.

It is a longing grief. God has placed it on my heart that in all likelihood, if things go as He seems to be revealing His plan to be, one of our children is likely already born or very soon to be born. And a day doesn't pass by that I do not physically long to hold that child in my arms. To kiss their sweet head. To know their smell. To rub their soft hands and kiss their tiny toes. To wrap them up and have skin to skin contact so we can bond and feel safe with each other. To pour Christ's love into every pore of their being. To jump at the chance to meet every single one of their needs and never let them doubt or wonder for a second if it is going to be met. (I'm not saying I'm the only one that can meet those needs-trust me, been there and learned that one the hard way with Bean. But I have learned that is the foundation of many adoptees' attachment challenges. But we also do not know our children's stories yet. They may be in foster care with an incredible family that loves them, cares for them, meets every single need and adore every moment they have with them. And there will be grief with that.) It is a grief of knowing that a child designed uniquely by God to be part of our family (us for them and them for us) is out there but not physically part of our family. I equate it to what it must feel like if one of your children is kidnapped and missing. You KNOW with that crazy, God-instilled Mama Bear Instinct that they are out there and you NEED with every fiber of your being to find them and hold them-for both of you. Selfish? Smoothering love? Maybe. But for some reason, it is how God made me. And so far (*knock on wood*) it hasn't damaged my kiddos too much.

It is an overwhelming grief for the grief that I know our children and their natural families will endure-not just at the moment of birth or the moment of loss of one another, but for the rest of their lives. Whether it is open or closed, there will be grief. Grief over lost dreams. Grief over not only their child and living life with their child, but a loss of who they were before their child's existence and before adoption. Grief over the way God created things to be and how that doesn't always line up with our expectations, no matter the reasons or situation. Grief over how society will forever view the natural family and how that will clog their healing.

Society consistently denies the natural family their right to grieve. Studies have shown that a natural mother's grief actually does the exact opposite of what is expected with grief involved with death: death grief generally decreases as time goes by, while natural mothers report that their anger and sense of loss actually increase over time (Dr. Condon's study of mothers in South Australia and Winkler and van Keppel's study of mothers). The loss of a child through adoption is one which usually is not openly acknowledged, and the mothers suffer alone in silence and are not "given permission" to grieve.

In many cases, the family that brought this child into the world is not recognized by the community. They will experience an emotional roller coaster that will span their entire lifetime. A roller coaster that I have never ridden and likely will never ride. A roller coaster that I can only read about in adoption books or nautral mother blogs. A roller coaster I can only imagine if I think of losing my own children, and even then, it doesn't touch it. And grief is only a chunk of that roller coaster.

It is an agonizing grief over the small glimpses of what I fathom grief will look like for the 2Bs. Grief over losses that include natural parents, extended family, foster family, home, pets, neighborhoods, schools, friends, treasured belongings, and in some cases culture. This article opened my eyes BIG time. And that is only a tiny speck of the tip of the iceberg of the 2Bs' grief.

That is as much as God will let me process at this point. I know adoption is not beautiful. It is not natural. It is messy and at times horrific torture for the triad, and the triad's traids, and their triads. I know the grief is only part of the process, and that the healing is lifelong. I know it will become a LARGE LARGE LARGE ginormous part of our every living breath. But I also know my God. And I know He heals and He loves, and He calls us to love all of our children. So for now I am trying to let it all soak in-the many griefs for the many people involved, and I try to somehow hand it over to Him and ask Him for the strength to begin to process it all so that when it is our every living breath, maybe just maybe, it will be a tiny nano-grain bit easier to hand it over every.single.second.

Big Fat Status Update

I'm guessing Facebook's character limit on status updates just won't cut it for this one. So yes, I've started yet another blog. And I have a grand idea of combining/condensing all the various blogs we've had over the years into one. Big. Fat. Blog. (Hey, a girl can dream!) I'll probably eventually move over to tumblr to host it but as it stands tumblr is blocked from my work computer... so blogger it is.

So the "short" version in an email I sent out to my closest prayer warriors:

Ben and I attended our first "Weekend to Remember" marriage conference last weekend. It was honestly a total "God thing" that we were there. Less than 2 months before we were at a point in our marriage where we saw absolutely no chance for a future. We were broken and hopeless. We felt like there was nothing left worth fighting for. Someone prayed for a miracle and I laughed in their face.

Thankfully God answers prayers, especially ones for miracles, because that is EXACTLY what we needed and EXACTLY what we got. Through God's sweet grace and beautiful plans, we turned our hearts back towards one another and put Him on the throne in the center of our marriage. Through TONS of prayers, tears, God's healing power, Celebrate Recovery, and counseling, we are in an amazingly beautiful place. A place where miracles happen. A place where we eagerly count down the days until "Weekend to Remember". A place where we have truly felt a calling to not only place God in the center of our marriage, but in every single aspect of our lives. This includes our work. We have both felt an overwhelming push from the Holy Spirit to have some part in a ministry-based job setting. We had absolutely no clue what that looked like. We wrestled with various daydreaming-marriage counselors, youth pastor, chaplaincy, international missionaries... and then we surrendered it to God and trusted that He would open the doors and gently guide us.

At the same time, we prayed unceasingly for God to provide a way for me to leave my former workplace (a very volatile environment that was extremely unhealthy for me and for our marriage) and still be able to help provide for our family. God provided. I am now in my 2nd week as the grant writer for Freeman Health Systems in Joplin, MO. I actually spend less time in the car every morning driving to work because there is VERY little traffic heading the opposite direction LOL:) We are now seeing that Joplin may only be a temporary detour on God's awesome path for our lives.

If you've ever been to a Weekend to Remember event, you know that on Sunday morning they make a presentation regarding opportunities to work with FamilyLife. Attendance is optional for conferees but as soon as we both read the description of the session, we circled it in on our weekend schedules. We walked away from that session ready to pack our family up and move to Little Rock faster than pronto. FamilyLife is headquartered in Little Rock and has many exciting ministry opportunities that center around the main goal of strengthening our marriages and families.

We filled out the "We are interested" card and any moment we weren't spending daydreaming of what this may look like for our family, we've been praying. A LOT. And surrendering our own wants, desires, and daydreams. A LOT. We both started getting a little discouraged around Wednesday/Thursday, especially about the whole "FamilyLife missionary staff raise their own salaries" tid bit. Then Billy called. Billy is one of the New Staff Representatives. We are scheduled for our phone interview on Monday evening at 7:30pm. As in 80 hours away. (nope, not counting!!!) We are just a little excited. ok. A LOT.

If you've read this far-THANK YOU!!!! Now we need you to pray. Pray that we would continue to put our daydreams aside and not try to orchestrate God's plans for our family. Pray that we can put aside our need to convince Billy that we are PERFECT for FamilyLife. Pray for clarity, wisdom, discernment, and the ability to just be still and listen (to Billy and God). Pray for continued encouragement for us as we still face a great amount of debt from when I was sick and we know that will play a huge role in this process. We are prepared for FamilyLife to say "wait" and ask us to revisit the opportunity once we have reduced the amount of debt. In that regard, please pray for continued resolve to squash all of our debt, to not look for quick fixes, and to know if this is God's plan for our family, it will all happen in His time and according to His will.

We have not announced ANY of this to our families yet. We are praying God will use the Holy Spirit to prod us when the time is right to broach the subject, likely after we have our first interview on Monday. If the interview goes well, they will send us a 20+ page application to each complete individually. Once our application has been reviewed and our references don't say "RUN!!!!!", the next step is the Ministry Preview weekend in Little Rock where we would meet some of the FamilyLife staff, learn more about the ministry, more of what is required of us, and more interviews. If they haven't begged us to hit the road by that point, we would go to a 10 day fundraising training in Orlando and then start raising our initial funds. It is typically an 18-24 month process. Ours will likely be longer because of the debt factor. Again, we have not discussed any of this with our families so those of you that know any of our family members, we kindly request that you hold off on mentioning it to them... run it by God all you want:)

We are incredibly appreciative of your prayers and any words of wisdom!! We are so excited to see where God is leading our family!!

God Bless and Love
The Mays

The Beginning

As far back as I can remember, my heart was already growing a special place for adoption. Even as a young girl growing up in a small town in north Texas, I was passionately intrigued by stories of adoption, and not just the novelty of it, but actually having an intense desire for it to be a part of my life.

Before I met Ben, MY plan was to have 3 boys (no thought ever really went into HOW these 3 children were going to come to be), stay single, live in an awesome cottage with TONS of land in the country with a short commute to a big city-yep, basically your everyday Angelina. Thankfully God had so much more amazing things in store for us! I met Ben and quickly threw away any single-mom-of-3-in-big-city notions out the window. (oh you are an awesome mighty God!)

Even in the beginning we randomly threw around the idea of adoption but both agreed we wanted to at least try to have children of our own. Again, God blessed us-in ways we didn't even realize at first. Isabella Grace was born in July 2006-we fell instantly in love and she has had us wrapped around her adorable (yet, at times, wiggly bossy) finger from the moment we laid eyes on the first of at least 10 positive pregnancy tests. Less than 2 years later, Ben was welcomed home by a little surprise:
Hunter Thomas was born December 2008 (thankfully NOT on his due date!!) and we became the May Quad. Flash forward 4 months, I hear the words, "It is cancer". Totally unexpected and unimaginably life changing. I was growing cancer at the same time I was growing our sweet baby boy. God is an all knowing God, and if Mr. Hunter is not proof of that, I'm not sure what is.

April 28, 2009 I had a radical hysterectomy, bilateral salpingo-oopherectomy and removal of 12 lymph nodes in the pelvic-abdominal region. In layman's terms, basically every internal female organ I once had was no more. I would never again grow a baby in my womb. At first, this thought did not phase me-I was in warrior mode just trying to literally live each day and defeat this disease. So what if I was missing a few parts... I was alive! After 28 treatments (every weekday for 6 weeks) of external radiation and a blood transfusion (aka my vampire treatment) and my first post-op, post-radiation CAT scan, I was declared cancer free!!! I never knew such sweet words!

Life sloooowly began to creep back to normal-or more like our "new normal". This new normal consists of us having to tenderly broach the subject of "Mama is going to the doctor" with Bella anytime my check-ups come around (every 3 months) because her precious heart cannot let go of that raw fear of that one time Mama "went to the doctor" and didn't come home for almost a week and how much it changed her sweet, innocent life. This new normal is me being thankful every day that Hunter was only 4 months old and will likely not have any fear-filled memories of his mama's cancer conquering days-even though I still weep over the days I missed holding him in my arms, bonding through feeding him my milk, and having to hear his giggles seep through the walls as I lay in bed struggling to overcome fatigue. This new normal is me, finally crossing over to "the other side" where I AM cancer free but have lost the ability to ever again surprise my husband with a pregnancy test. This new normal is me feeling my heart well up and overflow with the thought of the ability to once again bring home a baby for my family to surround with love, acceptance, awe, and a yearning to show God's love. Can you "hear" the celebration in my voice?

The seed really got planted when my sweet Mrs. Kathy (part of my Cancer Posse-diagnosed at the same time and our radiation appts were back to back so I was immensely blessed by her hugs and sweet notes each afternoon-she kept me going!) showed me a picture of her newest grandbaby, Sosi. If you don't fall in love with that sweet face, you need to get your heart checked out!!! I followed the Rusch Family's story as they experienced their "Gotcha Day" and brought beautiful Sosna Elle home-and every time (even AGAIN today) I watch the story unfold through their pictures, I end up bawling (poor Ben keeps thinking I forgot to change my hormone patch LOL). It has awoken something in my heart that I had long forgotten (or maybe just pushed aside for a bit til God knew it was His time to gently remind me). And God has worked through me to gently re-awaken the same in Ben (ok, so a bit of a slower process there but we gotta tread lightly with the old folks LOL). This is still very very very much a tiny work in process (though my heart is saying, "Hello, this is HUGE!!!") and only in the very beginning stages of even thinking of possibly considering, but I have a feeling it is something that will not leave my heart or mind or prayers for a very long time.

Please just pray that if this IS indeed God's will, that He will prepare our family (emotionally, spiritually, physically in health, financially, etc), that He will bring forth the child that he has already designed specifically for our family (and us for this child) and that He will pave the way to bring us together. I named this blog "Chiduben" or "guided by God" in the African language of Igbo. I just pray that this whole process will truly be guided by God.

Off for now to do my normal Danielle thing-research:)