It's True What They Say...

A child grows in your heart. I guess my lifelong marvel at the process of conception, pregnancy, and birth led me to always discount this claim from those who were adopting. I honestly thought that people who said this were saying it to make themselves feel better. In my mind, there was no way an idea, an imagining, could measure up to the mysterious miracle of life swelling within a woman's body.

That is what it is for me at this point, right? Just an idea? Heck, we do not even know if this child has been born yet. There is a soul out there, incubating within a womb, or perhaps just recently placed in an orphanage crib, that is making its way to us, but right now although it may be a real child, it is just an idea to me.

Or is it? Maybe not. How can a real child be only an idea?

To think that one process of gestating can't compare to another way of gestating was shortsighted. I am just discovering how unbelievably spiritual and completely mysterious this process is. When I sit still in the silence and close my eyes and clear my thoughts, I find I can feel this baby. I didn't try to do this, I just discovered it. It is as if I can travel to where this child exists on a spirit-level and meet it there, even begin to get to know it. I remarked to Scott the other night just how surprisingly similar this is to what I have experienced with getting to know my last two children who in fact did gestate within my womb. I did not get to know them by feeling an elbow jabbing my side, or a head grinding and turning repetitively under my rib. While I loved the physicality of gestation, if I wanted to truly tune into my child and feel who they were, even communicate with them, I had to meet the baby on a spirit-energetic level.

I guess it makes sense that I can communicate with this baby who is making his/her way to our home and hearts. I don't know why I am so surprised with it... I have long known that people communicate with each other even when they are not in proximity. We accept it as fact that animals know when their owner is coming home long before the owner arrives. Mystery, but fact just the same. We know a mother can drop everything she is in the middle of and bolt upstairs without thinking, to save her child from some perilous activity, all from just an unexplainable "feeling." Of course then, I can get to know this baby in some mysterious way that is beyond what we can explain.

And so, as I unfold to this child in my mind and in my being, I can feel this child also unfolding in my heart. When I walk into the orphanage in Kigali, Rwanda and the Sister takes me over to where our baby lies, I know without a doubt that I will recognize him. The mother who has just pushed the last shoulder of her baby from between her legs will pull her baby up to her bosom and talk gently to him, looking into his eyes. And she will know him, will not be surprised with him in the least. In awe, yes. Sky high, yes. Exhausted to be sure. And she will say, "It is as if I have known him forever." And in many ways, I will have.