I Saw What I Saw

When confronted with a moment that should be tear-filled, I tend to clam up, step back, and though fully present and experiencing a depth of emotion, display a face of stone. You can call it what you will, a means of protection, a way to survive, God's grace, but it is how I am built. 

It has been seven months since Jared, Thomas, and I stepped off an Ethiopian Air airplane and back onto American soil at Washington D.C.'s Dulles Airport with our nine-month baby girl, Lucia Ethiopia Kebedech, and not a day goes by that I do not think of her birthmother. Unlike my sons' adoptions, in which we only were able to meet their foster mothers (a truly wonderful gift), Jared and I, together with the other couples in our travel group, journeyed six hours south of Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, to meet members of our children's birth families.

"How was it?" I am quizzed when people learn of this encounter. Typically I unravel the logistics of our brief meeting - the anticipation while sitting in a crowded room waiting for our family to be called, knowing that Lucia's birthmother was so close, the glaring lights thrust upon us as we were videotaped, how much my daughter, our daughter, resembles the woman who carried her for nine months and gave her life, the fumbling questions, and how surreal it all was. And yet while I have teared up on occasion when speaking of and thinking of her, I have remained on pretty steady emotional ground. Until last night. 

Our dear friends Wade and Julie, just one of the beautiful couples with whom we shared our journey, created a video chronicling their trip to bring their daughter home from Ethiopia. Esther Selam's birthday is within weeks of Lucia's; the two lived together in Durame; and Selam and Ethiopia probably were together for that six-hour drive with their nannies to the care center in Addis where we finally met them. This couple from Tennessee and us from Iowa received our daughters' referrals on the same day; we passed court in Ethiopia on the same day; we flew together from D.C. to Addis and then back again. While this is uniquely their story, in many ways it is ours also. Because what they saw, we saw; what they experienced, we experienced; and because of it, we are forever bonded with them and all those members of our group.

And so I ask you to indulge me today because I know you love me and our family, or at the very least, you like us, and accept the lyrics of Sara Groves as my offering for this week's Poetry Wednesday. Right now, this is where my heart is and anything else given would be false. And I invite you to take thirteen minutes of your time and journey with Julie and Wade (and Jared and me) to Ethiopia.   

 

I Saw What I Saw

Sara Groves

I saw what I saw and I can't forget it

I heard what I heard and I can't go back

I know what I know and I can't deny it

Something on the road

Cut me to the soul

Your pain has changed me

Your dream inspires

 Your face a memory

Your hope a fire

Your courage asks me what I'm afraid of

And what I know of love

We've done what we've done and we can't erase it

We are what we are and it's more than enough

We have what we have but it's no substitution

Something on the road

Cut me to the soul

Your pain has changed me

Your dream inspires

Your face a memory

 Your hope a fire

Your courage asks me what I'm afraid of

And what I know of love

I say what I say with no hesitation

I have what I have and I'm giving it up

I do what I do with deep conviction

Something on the road

Cut me to the soul

Your pain has changed me

Your dream inspire

 Your face a memory

Your hope  a fire 

Your courage asks me what I am afraid of

And what I know of God.

Poetry Wednesday