Brokenhearted

            (This is Day 8 of Our Adoption Adventure. To start at the beginning, click here.)            

            As each day passed I grew more and more excited about having a baby girl. I knew I should not count on anything, but it could happen any day. I told my husband we at least needed to buy some diapers. We could not bring a baby home from the hospital without diapers.

            I called a friend, who loved babies as much as I did, and we went to the store and walked up and down the baby aisles. It had been many years since I walked down the baby aisles. Our daughter was ten and our son was eight. We gave all of our baby things away years ago. We thought we were finished having kids, and now we were on the brink of adding a baby girl to our family.

            After admiring everything in the baby section and all the sweet baby girl clothes I bought a package of tiny pink diapers. They were so cute. She was going to need some clothes also. I knew I shouldn’t buy too many things, until we knew for sure she was ours. I bought three pink and white onesies and three sleepers. We needed to be prepared. I didn’t want to have to run to the store on the way home from the hospital. A friend let us borrow her white wicker bassinet for the baby to sleep in.

            When we got home, my friend and I sat on the floor by the bassinet. We opened each of the packages and laid out all the clothes. I opened the diapers and we marveled at how small they were. It was hard to imagine a tiny person fitting in those diapers.

            My husband and I discussed baby names. He said it was my turn to choose a name. I read baby name books. I looked online at popular names. When we named our other two children, both years they were born, their names were in the top five for most popular names. This time I wanted something special, a name nobody else had. I wanted to name her ‘Hoshiana’, a form of Hosanna, which in Hebrew means ‘save now’ or ‘salvation.’ It sounded similar to ‘Oshiana’ or ‘Oceana,’, which meant ‘from the ocean.’ I knew those were big long names for a little baby girl, but they sounded so beautiful, I thought they would make a great little girl’s name.

            The next week I took Shiya and Arianna to her doctor’s appointment. The following week, which was one week before her due date, I was planning on taking her again. The afternoon before her appointment I got a call from the adoption agency. It was the director, Mrs. C.

            “I have some news for you Robyn. Are you sitting down?” she asked. 

I found a chair and sat down.

            “I just left the hospital where Shiya had her baby this morning. I talked with her and she has decided not to place for adoption. She wants to parent her little boy and her new baby girl.”

My heart sank. Tears flowed down my cheeks. I couldn’t say anything.

            “I’m sorry Robyn. I know this is very disappointing for you. I didn’t see this coming. I really thought she was going to place, at least the baby girl. She has a hard road ahead of her with three little ones to parent by herself.” She said.

I didn’t say anything. “Robyn, are you okay? I know this is very sad for you.”

Holding back the sobs, I managed to quietly say, “I’ll be all right. Thanks for calling.”

            I hung up the phone, buried my head in my hands and cried and cried. How could this happen again? Why were we doing this? Is this some kind of cruel joke? This hurts too much. This is too painful. My heart ached inside my chest. Lord, where are you? I thought you wanted us to adopt? I thought she was the one you had for us. I thought she was going to be our baby, and now this? How could an 18-year-old girl parent three kids under three years old? I didn’t get it. Those poor kids. That poor baby girl that I longed to hold in my arms. Now nothing.

            I cried until I could cry no more. I found some tissues and tried to pull myself together. Picking up the phone, I called my husband.

            “Hello.” He answered.

Tears started silently falling again. I couldn’t speak. He could hear my sobs.

            “Sweetie is that you? What’s wrong? What happened? Are you all right?” he asked.

            “She decided to keep her baby.” I mumbled through sobs.

            “What?”

            “Shiya had the baby today and she decided to keep her.” I cried harder.

            “What? How is she going to do that? She can’t raise those three kids on her own.” He said.

            “I know. I can’t believe it. That was going to be our baby girl.” I bawled.

            “I’m sorry Sweetie. I know how much you were looking forward to this one.” He said, trying to console me. “God must have something else for us, some other baby. She wasn’t the one for us.”

            I looked over at the wicker bassinet, with the pink baby clothes and tiny pink diapers still spread out in the living room.

            “Will you take these clothes and the diapers to the adoption agency, so Mrs C. can give them to her?”  I asked, wanting to get rid of the reminder of how foolish I had been to buy them.

            “Why don’t we save them for the next time?” He said, trying to console me.

            “There’s not going to be a next time!” I snapped. I could feel the anger rising. “I can’t do it any more. This sucks! Who wants to keep going through this only to have their heart broken like this? This is too much. It’s too much to ask of someone. I’m done with this.”  I said, determined not to go through this pain again.

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Have you been there?   Have you gone through a loss, and questioned where God was?

***Click here for Day 9.***