Rejection

The great thing about being a potential adoptive family with a national agency is the exposure we are given.  Throughout the US, potential birth mothers can look at the profile of a quiet couple from Western Nebraska, which means that monthly we are being shown to a dozen or more women who have a hard choice to make but who could maybe choose us to be the parents of their unborn child.

The horrible thing about being a potential adoptive family with a national agency is the exposure we are given.  Throughout the US, potential birth mothers can look at our profile, meaning a dozen or more women every month since we became active have chosen someone else.

We knew going in that adoption is tricky and requires patience, and we have prayed multiple times a day that the right situation come into our lives, the situation that will be best for our future son or daughter, even if it means we have to wait forever, even if it means we end up in a situation we weren't expecting.  We knew that women considering adoptions are given a pile of profiles to sift through and there are a lot of factors that go into her decision.

But it doesn't matter how much we knew or how much we continue to learn.  Rejection hurts.

In mid-August a little girl was born somewhere in Nebraska and she went home with another family.  Through a series of events we found out we were one of just a couple of choices her biological mother had narrowed it down to.  She chose them.  She didn't choose us.  That little girl is in a family that will love her dearly, and I hope she grows up to become a lovely woman with a beautiful life.  But on her due date, I realized I could've been her mother that day if things had gone differently.

Rejection comes in all shapes and sizes but it all feels about the same.  I found out recently that I wasn't as important to some people as they were to me and it hurt in the same place.  It felt the same when the publishing companies told me they weren't interested in my music.

We go way back, rejection and I.  It happens when you wear bright red overalls to school because you think they are cool... but they aren't. 

But I don't like to feel like a victim and blame the world when I'm rejected, because I find no one really cares how much you point the finger outward.  Trying to find a place for the blame isn't making the problem itself go away.

Rejection hurts because it hits my pride.  I thought we were a cute, fun loving couple that any woman considering adoption would fall in love with.  I was convinced I was important to someone when I wasn't.  I thought my music was good enough to publish so I sent it in.
But we aren't, I wasn't, it wasn't.  And when one thing feels like it isn't good enough, it spreads like a disease, until suddenly I don't feel good enough.  How easy it is to fall into a self-made pit when you feel less than good enough. 

Fact is, I am not always going to be good enough.  But, I have a deep and unmoving worth.  I am a person whose life has value.  The good Sunday School student answer is that I was created in God's image and therefore have worth.  That I am not good enough but by grace through faith I get to be His anyway.  But it goes beyond that, too.  The rejections I face today aren't my whole story.  Our profile has to be rejected just enough times for the right situation to fall into place.  I have to be rejected by people important to me to notice who doesn't, to remember not to do it to others. 

Rejection hurts but pain almost always goes away with time.

And in the meantime, I have three dogs.  Which is the definition of complete and total acceptance and devotion at all times.  Even as I write this, with all three snoring at my feet.