A Year Ago Today:

A year ago today a baby girl was born just a few miles from our house.  We had no idea.  We were still mourning the loss of another baby boy.  But that night before I went to sleep God whispered a secret in my ear.  I didn't know what it meant, but I filed it away for it seemed important.  We wouldn't know until three days later that the baby born was our daughter.

All day today in the midst of celebrating our girl I can't help but think about one year ago today.  One year ago our girl was with her biological mother.  One year ago that mother made a decision.  A decision that changed our lives and hers forever.  I wonder how she is today and what she did.  I wonder if she thought about us. I wonder if she is mourning.  I have to say that I spent part of the day mourning.  I didn't expect it, but I did.  I cried when I was trying to tell Karis the story of her first birthday because all I have to go by are hospital records and what the social worker told us.  I'll never know the whole story of today.  I'll never be able to fill in those gaps between now and glorious March 23 when she came home to us.  I wasn't there to hold her and kiss her and sing to her in her first hours of life.  But through those same tears I am oh so thankful that I got to be there today and hopefully for many more birthdays to come.

From all of the adoption literature that I read, I knew that birthdays tend to hold a little sadness because they are often the anniversary of a loss.  However, I never really thought that it would be my loss that I would mourn.  Not to say that my loss of 8 days with my sweet girl even comes close to the loss that her b-mom lives with.  Oh how I wish we could meet her and tell her how wonderful K is, and thank her for our beautiful girl.  You see, no matter how we look at it we are forever intimately tied to this woman that I've never met.  I look for her sometimes at the grocery store or other places around town.  I wonder if I would know her; if upon sight I would think, that is my daughters nose or eyes or whatever.  Maybe someday she'll choose to meet us.  And I am sure if that day were to come I would be a bundle of nerves and temporarily regret my wish to meet her, but I think it would be sweet.

This adoption world is a whole different world.  One that I am glad to live in, but definitely one born out of loss.