Five months

Sometimes I wonder if I don't have some kind of internal clock that can sense when another month has gone by since Zion died. It seems like I'll start having a clump of tough days where I just feel down and I'm thinking more of Zion and than I'll realize that another month has passed since his birth or his death. This week has been particularly difficult and culminated this morning with a good, long cry. I started missing him a lot in the last few days and began to think about him as we took a walk together with Scotty and Natty. One of the tougher aspects of all of this has been the very different ways Scotty and I have individually dealt with it and when moments arise that those differences become more pronounced, the sadness becomes stronger as well. It's hard to walk through the valley of grief with your spouse on a separate path. Anyway, there's this funny thing that happens sometimes when the bad dream feeling goes away and is replaced by that fresh, like-it-happened-yesterday feeling where I am back in the NICU with Zion, praying for him, watching the doctors work on him, riding up the elevator to see him and wondering how he'll look, and then holding him for the first time while he died. I can't make myself feel those things, even when I try, and other times I can't help but be there all over again. It nearly takes my breath away. Anyway, as rough as it is to go through that, even as I cry, I realize it's still a step forward. All that I've heard and read about grief reminds us that things can go from OK to awful in no time at all. So, I like to believe that the intense feelings of sadness are only moving me forward as I continue to work it all out. One thing feels different than it did at the beginning- the ability to believe it will be alright in the end. And, as it always has, the idea of Zion living it up in heaven, avoiding all the suffering we are going through right now, is a happy thought.

We visited a lawyer yesterday who works with adoptions. She didn't have a lot of new things to tell us but helped to confirm what we knew already about the adoption process. One, that it is very long and you're basically at the mercy of the judge to pick out what baby she feels is right for you. You don't see any babies beforehand and you only have the choice of sex and a ball-park age range. Although this lawyer said the children are screened for physical and mental handicaps and that you shouldn't be offered one that has either (what do they do with those kids??), I have heard of foreign adoptive parents finding otherwise. So, we're praying about when to start the process- whether it's something we want to try to start soon or wait a bit on. We're excited about the idea but I have to say I wish there were some things that were a bit clearer to make me feel more in control. I'm a little nervous about getting a child who has been in an orphanage that has a no-touch policy, realizing that a lack of touch can have great negative affects on a child as early as within the first few weeks of life. But, all these things we'll have to trust the Lord on since we don't have much of a choice. It's interesting how he sometimes makes it very clear that we don't have a say, other than the way we choose to respond to a situation. Maybe it's better that way...