letting go to find

sometimes you must let something go completely, to find it. sometimes it's in total surrender that you are given it back.  but the letting go is so hard.  the total surrender is almost impossible.

it has been a hard week.  a week of letting go and surrendering and knowing that really, with rose, we have no control over this situation.  it is out of our hands.  it's up to others.  her life, our lives, and how her life and our lives join- will be determined by other people- people who left her on the street- people who let her get lost. 

there is a lot in that.  a lot of emotion and exhaustion and wondering and planning and 'what if's and 'if then's.' but in the end there was nothing we could do.  nothing except let go and pull off our sticky little hands and place her and all of it- the whole messy ball of it- into the everlasting arms.  thank God for those arms.  i couldn't have let go except for those arms that i knew were big enough to hold all of us.  all of us.  rose and me and mike and her birth mom and her birth dad and her uncle and our other kids- and somehow make goodness come- even though it might not look like the goodness that i wanted. 

the thing about those arms is that i know they know. i know that they are love. i know that they can see into a dimension that i don't even know exists. so really it's kind of funny that i would rather try to manage it all myself 99% of the time, and only when the situation screams at me that none of my plans are even possibly going to be of any help- only then do i forfeit. 

but those arms are creator arms- they make beautiful things with scraps and broken bits- they turn sadness into dancing and empty into full. and sometimes they let us see that pain and hard things can move us into places that we couldn't have gone in comfort and ease.  this life we live is about continuing to open our eyes.  our years are about seeing more and more the truths around us- even the ugly ones- and learning to be gentle- learning that there are many ways- learning that things we thought were fixed and glued can be bent and morphed and re-shaped.  our time together is about connection and growth and amazement- if we let it be- if we keep our eyes open- if we try.

i showed up at the meeting with rose's birth parents on thursday after crying through my cup of coffee down the street.  i almost didn't show.  i almost ran away. it was the week after our last meeting. it was the day after a week of deliberation and decision.  this was the day that i would be told if we could become rose's legal guardians.  i sat in my chair with a lump in my throat and looked up to the hills- fighting tears- 'from whence does my help come? my help comes from the Lord, who made the heavens and the earth' ran the ticker tape of childhood verse.  'where are you in this God?' i cried.  'what am i even doing here?' if i didn't have michael our karamajong friend and translator with me, i may have gotten back into my car and driven far away to the water- to lake victoria- to somewhere where i could feel as small as i felt.  'He who watches over you will neither slumber nor sleep' - hold this i thought and be brave. so i did.  'this is your child' i said to those everlasting arms. 'this is your child, i'm just part of her picture.....but i would love to be a big part of that picture.'

the meeting got started an hour late.  mike had to be at work, and i'd let rose go to school, so it was just me and michael our translator friend and rose's people and the social worker and lawyer.  i bit my lip and prepared for the news but it wasn't what i thought.  it was exactly opposite of what i thought. they gave her to me, to us, to our family.  they decided that we could legally have her with us- and commit to seeing them regularly- commit to knowing them and her village and her people- which of course we WANT for her.  that was it.  it was their answer- their answer written down in two languages and signed with thumb prints. 

what do you say then? how should your face look when you are sitting across from a woman who birthed your child and is allowing you to keep her? how do you hold the beautiful bittersweet of that moment- the joy and the almost agony?  i felt it all.  but mostly i felt thanks.  thanks to her and her family for their trust and their willingness to be so very brave- when the easier thing would have been to say 'no', to say 'leave it as it is'.  thanks to those things that spoke to her this week- that spoke to her spirit- that moved her and brought her comfort and to a place of her own letting go.  that was something we shared this week- the letting go.  she and i. housed and homeless. with much, with little.  with love and families- she and i had to let go.  i let go of what might be.  she let go of what was. 

it was those arms that held us all and will as we walk forward into what this life will bring us.  this crazy hard and beautiful life.  it is those arms who matched up people who should never have become family but have- all of us- now with our eyes much more open.  and our hearts.  it was those arms that took lost and turned it into more than found.  that took 'left' and made it right again.  that took broken and made it whole.

here i am breathing. amazed. surprised. and smiling. amazed and surprised and smiling at the joy that unfolds- at the miracles that happen when we open ourselves, when we give in, give up, let go and hold up our hands. 

wow!