A child lives here (finally)

I went in to my little boy's bedroom today to try to wake him up from his extra-long nap, and this was the scene.  Most people would probably think about how messy his room is.  But, I teared up, and went for the camera.  Trains and tracks, a ball, an Elmo, his tricycle that is supposed to be outside, and several other random things were strewn about, and in the middle of the room sat his little bed, with a fast-growing sturdy little boy sprawled across it sideways, one leg hanging off, sawing logs.  I had to snap a picture.  Maybe in someone else’s eyes this is a messy room, but in my eyes, a room cluttered with toys says "a child lives here." 

One wonderful thing about spending seventeen years of your life trying to have a child is that when it finally happens, you find joy in some of the things that others find annoying or repetitive or mundane.  I'm sure if I'd spent that seventeen years cleaning up after kids, I would probably feel the same way.  But I didn't, and I don't.  There was a time when I really wondered if a child would ever live in my home and splash in my bathtub and run through my house with all the gusto of a charging elephant.  And, when our first adoption failed, and our sweet baby boy was returned to his birthfather, whatever glimmer of hope I had left faded even more.  I knew it was in God’s hands, and that I had done everything I could do, and that if it was going to happen, it would happen, and if not, then it wouldn’t.  Sometimes it’s hard knowing you can’t do anything else about it, and sometimes it’s a relief that you’ve done all you can and it’s out of your hands.  Either way, it is a long and difficult lesson in patience.  But it’s oh so worth it.  It’s been two and half years since our little guy rode home with us for the first time.  I still often leave his toys spread across the yard as if documenting the fun we had that day.  In my mind I can see the dotted lines connecting his random path from bike to sandbox to balls to the bushes, over the rocks, up to the deck and back to the bike like an old Family Circle comic, and I smile at the crazy randomness of little kids.  And instead of cleaning everything up and getting back to the grown-up yard it was before, I leave everything untouched, and listen to those toys reassuring me that “yes, a child finally lives here.  You’re long-awaited child lives here.”

 (If you want to read about our failed adoption mentioned here, check out my post "Giving my baby back.  The Worst Day of my Life.")