Miraculous

“OK,” said Amber the six months pregnant NICU nurse. “You need to make a choice. I need to change his bed linens. I can’t hold him and do that at the same time. You can either change the sheets while I hold him or…”

“I’ll hold him! I’ll hold him!” I screamed in a whisper. She smiled and told me to go for it.

I stepped up to his little bed, lifted and lowered the plastic side, adjusted wires to avoid NICU alarms, and breathed.

I was afraid that I wouldn’t love him the same as our girl, who we’d lost. I was afraid that being born of someone else, he wouldn’t really feel like mine. I was afraid to feel nothing when I held him in my arms for the first time – to feel like he wasn’t really my son.

I scooped his squirmy, red body up into my arms, held him close, breathed, felt my heart beat. Ours. Our son. Mine. My son. It was instantaneous.  He belonged to us. God always meant him to be with us.

When people tell me now how much he looks like me, the only word I can use to explain what adoption has been for us is this – miracle. A miracle that could only be created by a God who is love. A miracle that still stops me dead in my tracks when my boy peaks around the corner and smiles at me and I can’t contain my thankfulness or my joy. This boy, by the grace and mercy and miraculous work of God, is my boy.

Holding my boy for the first time.