We’ve started the adoption process and as we drive into town to do some shopping, I am pondering our life, our childlessness, the strangeness of what we’re going through, a tangle of confusion and grief and hope and anger and frustration.  And amongst a trail of similar forgettable days, this one is about to be remembered.

A Tiny Flicker

The sun’s shining and as we drive up a hill, over the canal, through some green traffic lights (this mundane location is about to become ingrained on my mind) a thought enters, bypassing thinking and debate, then spinning my heart on its way directly to my core, my soul.

I start. (I’m glad I’m not driving).

I catch my breath.

Oh.

My eyes widen and water.

The thought is more than just an idea…

It is a New Truth.

My heart recognises it immediately, like the voice of a friend you haven’t heard in years cutting through the chatter in a crowded room, but my mind toys with it, rolling it around my brain as it works out how it connects will all the other stuff in there.  And yet when it settles in the right place, it’s clear this thought was meant to be there all along.

There are moments in our lives when a tiny shift makes sense of your life and you experience a new reality.  This is one of those.

And that truth that I did not conjure up, but found me in the midst of heartache, reverberates like a tuning fork to happiness, bringing silent tears of joy.

What If?

It’s a simple idea.  So simple you might not even recognise its majesty when you read it.  So simple as to be blindingly obvious in a ‘why haven’t I thought of that before?’ shrug and yet, it is deeply moving and profound.

They’re already here.

Oh.

O.M.G.

What a magnificent, expansive, exhilarating thought!

What if the children who need us most as their parents are already here?

My mind jumps and creates an image of children, not far from here, already here, already born, who will be our children, but who came through a different route.  An invisible thread connecting me to some children who need me.

This truth tells me gently that life is going to plan, if not the plan that we wrote for ourselves.

I will be a parent, I will have children, I will be a mum, I will have a family.

My hope is reborn.

And in that hope, my tears of grief for the child we never bore turn to tears of joy for the children who are already born.

The universe has other plans for me