I’ve not blogged in a bit. Thank you for all of the kind e-mails checking to make sure that we’re all alright and that the adoption is progressing. We’ve been buried-under-busy since moving in January, but I’d like to get back to posting.
I’ve wanted to start blogging again for a while, but today I felt like I had the proper motivation. Our sweet Bella has been with us for three years now. Three years.
Bella,
I cannot remember life without you. Although I can remember the day you came to us down to the smallest details – the nausea in my stomach on the way to the hospital, the fear and despair written over every inch of your cancer ravaged little body, the panic that set in when I realized that your illness was much more than the intake worker had implied, the sadness that overtook your being as you realized you were going home with us, strangers.
Yes. I remember it all. How is it that I can remember it so well, but simultaneously I cannot remember life without you? I think it is grace – God had begun to prepare my heart for you before you came – I think I cannot remember life without you because you were there in my heart long before I ever knew it.
We’ve been through the ringer these last three years, eh? The darkest night of your soul. Your agony. Cancer. Food issues. Sleep issues. Rage. More cancer. Then pinpricks of light – when I think you began to feel like even though it had been completely taken apart, the puzzle of your life was beginning to come back together – in a different way.
We are not in the light just yet. There is still pain, fear, challenges. But now we work through them together instead of them dividing us.
You, Bella, are my daughter. I love you.
I am not your first Mama. I will never, ever be your only Mama. But God has knitted us together in a way that only adoption can produce – in a way you can only experience by watching God heal brokenness and create family from nothing.
Soon you will be seven. Before we know it you will be 16. In the blink of an eye your Daddy will be walking you down the aisle. And I feel so blessed to get to experience it all with you.
Right now you and your sisters are singing your own rendition of “Let It Go” and we are getting ready to eat dinner which will assuredly be a chaotic, loud, and incredibly messy event. Yes, event. I will cherish each minute of it – when you are so helpful with your sisters, when you complain because I put veggies in the sauce, and when your eyes light up because your Daddy decides to make cookies with you tonight.
I praise God for you, little one.
Love you, love you, love you,
Mama
