H.U.G. = Holding Up to God

Let's be honest, I've had an emotional week.  Which you can probably tell from my last post.  And it's only Tuesday! Yikes.  

Mother's Day is coming up on Sunday, and guess what ... another year has gone by and I'm still not a mother.  This is a difficult time of the year for all of us who struggle with infertility issues.

I was at a party on the weekend and two of the women there had just found out they're pregnant and naturally were all excited.  And in my heart, for a change, I wasn't even struggling with feelings of sadness and jealousy.   What I was actually thinking was that maybe I'll get to be the one making an announcement soon!  Because we have been seriously thinking about international adoption and we're right in the midst of doing all our research. For a variety of reasons that I won't go into now (turns out international adoption is one very complex issue!), we finally narrowed the adoption choices down to Albania.  So there I was imagining our little Albanian child playing with his/her cousins-to-be who were already at that party, and day-dreaming about how amazing it would be.

Then yesterday morning, I got some sad news.  Due to my husband's age, we can only adopt a child who is a teenager.  And seeing as how we'd be first time, inexperienced parents, and the child would no-doubt come with some serious baggage at that age, and at the very least there would be a huge cultural gap as well as language issues, we just don't feel up to that kind of adoption.  (It's not that I don't realize older children need homes, I just don't feel adequate for the task of diving feet-first into teenage angst with a hitherto unknown adolescent from a completely different culture than our own who probably doesn't even speak our language!)

So I found myself in a meeting this morning - correction, I was leading a meeting this morning - and feeling a million miles away, and knowing I needed to focus and fulfill my responsibilities - which I did - with a sincere smile, even though I felt a little broken inside.  And right afterwards, I walked outside to get in my car and one of my friends stopped me and asked me if I was okay and I broke down and started to cry.  She just wrapped her arms around me and hugged me.  I mean, really HUGGED me!  And started to pray.   It was such a wonderful feeling of support and she prayed these words, "I'm holding my sister up to you God!"  

And I couldn't help but think, what healing power there is in a "prayer hug" when someone is hugging me and holding me up to God all at the same time.  So I'll send a big H.U.G. out to my cyber friends today.  We can probably all use a little love, a few prayers, and a big hug regardless of what we're going through.  (And thank-you Amanda, for being such a wonderful friend!)