Wanting to choose The Ones.

Where I left off telling my story, I was mentioning a certain website where I was spending a lot of my time…

I’m a researcher. I rarely had questions for my doctor because everything I wanted to know I learned myself by reading online and by getting books from the library. Many of my Google searches for various questions landed me on the same website: Babycenter. Babycenter has quite a bit of information about pregnancy, including those graphic childbirth videos that no one really wants to see. So I ended up on this site quite a bit. Wandering around on the site I found my way to the message boards. On the message boards there are groups for everything you can think of. One of these groups was the LDS board. If you haven’t figured this out already, I am LDS. So naturally I was drawn to this board out of a sense of belonging and mutual understanding. I started posting there- getting answers to questions or just chit-chatting. This was all during the time that I found myself wanting to withdraw from the “real” world, since I found it difficult to trust anyone and also because of that instinct I felt to protect myself and stay close to the nest. It was nice to be able to have so much interaction with people while still being safely and comfortably at home.

Sometime around January, 2007:

For a few months now I was engulfed big time in harsh, bitter reality and longed to see something good and miraculous happen. So I was eager to choose a family. Once I did finally break down and see a caseworker, he encouraged me to wait until I was around 6 months along to choose the family. His reasoning and explanation for that advice made perfect sense to me. But I wanted that emotional rush of finding the ones. I had already been looking at online profiles from time to time, looking for inspiration. What was I looking for?

- College degrees
- Strong testimonies of the gospel
- Intelligence
- Seriousness about the adoption process
- A glimmer, a spark: something in the eyes that speaks to me
- An appreciation for family
- A sense of understanding of my position in all this
- About one state away of distance
- That burning feeling of confirmation

I admit I remember dejectedly looking at profile after profile, clicking from one page to the next and feeling nothing. Or very little. I felt some discouragement that I didn’t seem to be able to find that last criterion- that burning feeling, the overwhelming confirmation that I had found the ones. It just wasn’t happening. I still felt strongly and confidently that adoption was right for me but I just wasn't finding that perfect fit.

So I did something that looking back, surprises me. I just picked one that I liked. Don’t get me wrong, there was nothing wrong or inferior about the couple I chose. They fit all of my criteria with the sole exception that I liked them, I just didn’t overwhelmingly love them. Though I didn’t really know that at the time because I had nothing to compare it to.

February 2007:

I emailed the couple through the LDS Family Services website (which, thank goodness has been completely re-done) and soon we were emailing back and forth, getting to know each other. If I’m remembering correctly it was after a couple weeks of emailing that I told this couple I had chosen them to adopt my baby. Emotional rush! Hooray, just what I had wanted. Yet, again, looking back it just wasn’t quite what it should have or could have been.

Then Valentine’s Day of 2007 came and shook up my whole world.