Emotions

Some days I am just overwhelmed with emotions for my children. 

Yes, technically, my only child is Gabe, but in my heart, there already is a child (or two) on the other side of the world whom I call my own; who I love deeply, passionately and fiercely.  Just like I love Gabriel. 

These emotions I feel... love that feels like it can suffocate me because it's so strong, agony for their pain and challenges, joy for their triumphs and hope for their futures.  These feelings are usually the followed by feelings of gratitude to their birth families and inadequacy and unbelievability that God has trusted us to raise these children; to love them and to teach them to love Him. 

Then I read a poem like this and in a simple cadence, it describes my feelings beautifully:

...
  I tiptoed into your room one night.
I watched you sleeping there.
Your tiny body looked so snug
Wrapped in peaceful slumber's care.

I thought of how you came to be
The child we'd longed to know.
I wondered at the sight of you:
"How could she let you go?"

Tears streamed down my cheeks as I
Felt the pain she must have known.
For I will have to let you go
Some day when you are grown.

A mother I might never meet
Had given me her son.
Yet, surely as you've filled my heart,
A piece of hers you'd won.

"How could she let you go?"
The question kept returning.
And in the depths of my own heart.
A question kept on burning.

"How can I ever let you go
When years have come and gone?"
I stood there by your crib until
The nighttime turned to dawn.

And as the sun peeked through the shades,
The voice of God broke through.
"I trusted her to give him life
And now I'm trusting to you.

"To show him what is right and wrong,
to love him and to be
The one who teaches him the way
To come back home to me.

"He wasn't hers to give, you know.
And he's not yours to own.
I've placed him in your life to love

-Valerie Kay Gwin, from Chicken Soup for the Adopted Soul