No Regrets...

Jaime usually writes these blogs. It’s odd that she does, since for so long I considered myself the “writer” in our family, but since I can’t ever get off the Houston Texans fan sites long enough to finish a blog let alone a book, I’m afraid I’m going to have to concede that title to her.

Her writing is so much more succinct, so much more powerful, so much more emotional. Me, I’ve spent four lines writing about why I don’t write, instead of getting to the point. I’m like a long Faulkner novel- she’s like a Hemmingway short story. But both have their places in the pantheon of literature, and so I come here to share my thoughts as well. (If you haven't already read Jaime's blog post- "Finding Hope" - please do so)

This was not how I pictured Christmas. I haven’t been home for Christmas in 3 years, and despite the fact that we’ve gotten to celebrate the holidays with Jaime’s parents in some pretty cool places, I missed Christmas with my family. Christmas at the Thomas house was always something I looked forward to. Whether it was my insistent father forcing hot chocolate and toast on us before we opened presents, or the way my mother watched as we opened our gifts, barely containing her excitement, Christmas at our house is something I missed deeply living overseas.

And yet the circumstances of the past four days forced me to call and reschedule. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t celebrate a birth on Christmas when the birth of my own son was taken away from me.

This has been a long journey for us. It’s been, as I’m sure you all know, a journey filled with more losses than victories. But make no mistake; despite the empty nursery at our house, there have been victories in this journey. They’re hard to see, they’re hard to feel, and they’re certainly hard to remember, but they have been there.

But the question that has been rolling around in my head, and the one that got me out of bed to write these thoughts down, is are there any regrets? Do we regret telling everyone about this adoption? Do we regret the baby showers? Do we regret the move to a larger house, the hiring of a live-in amah, the late nights putting together Ikea furniture for the nursery? Do we regret the 30-hour flight across the globe?

No.

Even though all of those things will lead to more pain.

In a short time we’ll have to get on a plane. We’ll pass the bulkhead seats where we should be sitting with our new baby boy. We’ll be crammed in like sardines and go stir crazy for two long plane rides, where I assure you there will be tears. The way our luck is going, there will probably even be some screaming children around us. But do we regret coming home? No. Because even though I may not have been able to celebrate with my parents yesterday, I will get to celebrate with them. Jaime was able to hug her uncle and weep with her cousin and laugh with her grandmother. We were able to play dominoes with our family and watch Christmas Vacation (even though emotions and jet-lag meant that Jaime slept through half of it.) The plane ride home will be tough- but we won’t regret it.

We know that we have to get in a taxi when we get to KL and go to a new house- a big house, a house meant for a family. It was a house we expected to be filled with the tears and laughter of a baby, and it will be hard to sit on our couch and hear the silence. But do we regret moving? No, because we arranged the move before the match was made. We believe that one day, when the child we have is sick and weeping and won’t stop crying, that we will wish for that silence again. We believe that there will be the sound of our child’s laughter in that house. And it is that belief that we will hold on to when we open the front door in a couple of weeks.

And then there’s Janet, our live-in amah, who we hired to take care of our little one. Now, beyond making our lunches in the morning and periodically doing laundry, she won’t have much to do. Do we regret hiring her? Paying her money to do what we’re more than capable of doing ourselves? No. Because she has wept with joy over being treated better in the past three weeks with us than she has been in 7 years of working in Malaysia. And because we believe that one day she will be making meals for our little one too.

Do we regret telling everyone at work? Announcing the arrival of our son through blogs and Facebook? Eventually, we have to go to work, and face the genuine looks of sorrow that others feel for us. Yes, it will be hard to hold it together when our friends hug us a little harder and whisper condolences in our ears. But why would we regret something that allows us to feel the genuine love and support that others have for us? If reading our Facebook page gives us comfort (and it does), why would regret feeling the love of those who call us friends in person?

We were asked by good friends, cautious friends, friends who care about us, if we wanted to wait until after the baby was born to have the showers at work and at church. They knew that this very pain we are feeling right now could happen. Do we regret the baby showers? No. Because it is the hope of life that those showers celebrated that keeps us going right now.

Yes, eventually we have to go home and see the beautiful gifts- the cutest bear in the world that is sitting in our crib, the bookshelf of stories we dreamed of reading to our son, the changing table and crib that were themselves gifts from a shower. Will we sit in the chair in the corner of the nursery and weep? Yes. Will we slam the door closed in anger and wish the room wasn’t there? Probably. But do we regret celebrating the opportunity that this child provided for us? No. Would we do it all again? Yes.

A few years ago we bought a teddy bear from Jockey (an American underwear store). Jockey supports adoption worldwide and the proceeds of that little bear went to some organization that was raising adoption awareness. That little bear has lived in three houses, and been all over the world, in hopes that one day our own little adopted child would hug it. Jaime kept the tag on the bear, in hopes that she would rip it off when the time came for our child to hold it.

We ripped it off before we left.

Do we regret that? No. We knew this could happen- we hoped, we prayed, we believed it wouldn’t. But we knew it could, and we refused then, as we still refuse know, to let fear and regret run our lives.

A month ago, we received news that the birthmother was wavering in her decision to place the child for adoption. The cultural pressure and fear of the pain it would cause her were weighing heavily on her mind. I wrote these words in an email to Jaime then- and they hold even truer now.

You should know that I love you. I believe in God, I believe in us, and I believe in this adoption. Maybe I'm crazy or wrong about all three. God could not be real, something could eventually tear us apart, and this adoption could fall through. But that's not the point. I believe. It has always been enough- like the moments I believed we would make it through our hard times, or when I believed you would survive. Hopefully, and prayerfully, it will be enough now. Because, honestly, it's all I have.

Belief is a powerful thing. It can help overcome fear, like the fear I have of the tears to come. It can control regret, like the regret that I do have that I can’t stop the heartache that my wife is feeling right now.

Can belief make the pain go away? No. Can it make the tears stop? No. We’ve believed for 7 years, and we still don’t have a child. The power of belief lies not in today, but in tomorrow. It’s been four days since we found out. Four days and I have wept every single day.

But belief in a tear free tomorrow is all that I have right now.

And it's all that I need.