Finding My Heart

August 2002

Mark and I had only been together a couple months when we first discussed our desire to adopt. It was a warm summer evening and we were sitting on my Dad's dock in Maine, drinking beer and getting to know each other. The topic of being raised by adoptive fathers came up - something Mark and I share in common - and it led to a discussion about building our own family through adoption some day.

Clearly we were falling in love quickly if we were on that topic already, but that's another story!

Fast forward 6 years and for a variety of reasons we had not taken action on our dream. I had done a few internet searches here and there but always came away overwhelmed and no closer to knowing how or where to begin. Then one day my mother sent me an email. It was just a "hi, how are you" type of email but in it she mentioned that she was doing something with The Order of Malta for St. Charles.

I had no idea what the Order of Malta was and had to Google it. It’s interesting - you can read about it here. St. Charles is a Group Home in the town where I grew up. My mother was always encouraging me to bring those kids home after school, which I did once in a while, but I don't think I wanted to and I definitely didn't understand why she wanted me to.

If I could rewind the clock I would bring those kids home every day and I wouldn't be so jealous when it seemed like all they wanted to do was steal my mother's affections.

I don't know what it was about that day, but the thought of St. Charles made me very emotional. When I went to their website the tears started flowing and I kept thinking, "I want to adopt!". I ended up spending the better part of the day researching the myriad of options surrounding adoption. This time I didn't come away overwhelmed by choices but rather overwhelmed by clarity, emotion and a certainty that this was something I wanted to do. I expected resistance from Mark but when I blurted out "I think we should get serious about adopting" there wasn't an ounce of hesitation in his "OK". I have pursued this dream like a woman on fire ever since.

There is a passage in Josh and Amy Bottomly's book, "From Ashes to Africa", that I just love. It talks about how "any time art touches your life with tears, whether through a story, song, film or painting, it is wise to pay attention to those tears because they might just help you find your heart...".

So, ok, this sequence of events wasn’t exactly art, but it was most definitely my tears that helped me find my heart and see what was inside it.

Fast forward another 17 months and that takes us to the present. Yesterday my mother sent me another "hi, how are you" email mentioning St. Charles and The Order of Malta. It is the first time she has mentioned either since the day that set this whole thing in motion. I, for one, think it would be rather fitting and pretty cool to have this be the week that we finally get to see the faces of the little ones who were born in our hearts so long ago...

(Note: Although we did not see their faces for another several weeks, the day after I wrote this we did get a call from our case worker asking us if we were open to twins and open to upping our age range in order to pursue them!)