Our becoming parents is only going to be possible through the self-sacrificing love of a birthmother. What a tremendously humbling thought! The trajectory of our lives depends on a hurting woman choosing to live the rest of her life with a hole in her heart because she values the life of her child more than her own comfort and desires. Our child's birthmother will embody the love of Christ in the most literal way- giving her own flesh and blood for another's good. I cannot help but to get weepy when I think about it.
We are totally and completely at the mercy of another's love. The love of another whom we have never met and may never meet. We will owe the very existence of our family to one woman's choice to respond to God's voice in her life.
It's hard to imagine someone having the courage and strength to make an adoption plan for their child without the love and grace of God. The circumstances leading to an adoption plan are most often painful and isolating. It seems to me that women who choose adoption for their babies are also making a choice to let God work in their lives- to let God love them.
This reality gives me pause and points me toward all the places in my life where I have refused to let God work; where I've refused to let him love me. I can foolishly and stubbornly push him away out of anger and hurt or I can open myself to his grace. Like our child's birthmother, I have a choice to make. Will I let Jesus love me? Or will I push away the gift (and all the graces that come with it)? Will I try to rely on my own power and miss out on the miracles that are possible through allowing God and others to love?
“How beautiful it is to let oneself be loved by God, because if you feel loved you can do anything,” and this is “the most important thing in life: to let yourself be loved in order to love and die happy.”
-Chiara Corbella
Beautiful, and true. I have soooooooo much admiration and respect for birth mothers.
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