Trusting the "No."

This is pretty timely given this time of year lends itself to self-reflection.

2010 hasn't been my favorite. For multiple reasons. Yes, there's been lots of good, however, I'm happy to start afresh this weekend.

Although if I were being mature and positive-attitude-ish I'd say this year was a great opportunity for growth. And if I were Britney I'd say I'm stronger than yesterday.

Looking back, I might categorize this year with the phrase, "Trusting the No." I'm making t-shirts, actually.

Specifically (yet still vague, how do ya like that?) we've had several opportunities to Trust the No in regards to building our family. I'm not sure if this is the case w/ other families in our situation but we seem to keep having the occasional potentially-life-changing email grace our inbox.

The email or phone call typically goes something like this, "Russ and Katie, {filler stuff about how big eliot's getting, blah blah}, Hey, not sure if this will amount to anything and I hate to get your hopes up but I have a friend who's pregnant but has decided to give the baby up, thought of you guys, details details, call me if you're interested." This year we've had 4 of these opportunities or some version of the same offering. Baby/Kid needs a family and we thought of you.

Obviously, none of these have amounted to anything for our family. For whatever reason, it remains as is.

{SCREECHING STOP! Please know I am FULLY aware of how blessed I am to have the husband and child I do. I'm not.at.all. taking them for granted. They are 12 kinds of amazing, this I know.}

That's 4 times Russ and I scramble to have a huge talk about what to do, what this would mean for Eliot, our family, etc. That's 4 times we've decided "yes" and been told "no." Some of those have ended within days, some have dragged on a couple weeks. We rarely share these with family and friends anymore. No need to invite people onto our roller coaster of crazy.

Ideally we enter into each of these holding the dream lightly not tightly but every time the "no" happens, it's disappointing. Sometimes worse than others, of course. I'm all like, "Lord, whatever you want, whatever your will is, whatever's best for this kid and our family" while mentally planning our next family photo shoot and picking out paint colors for the nursery.

And if I'm being really honest *cringe* there's more than one negative "test" in the garbage this year. More No's.

All that to say, we do this to ourselves. We put ourselves out there knowing the risk is 50/50 that it won't happen. And we're okay with that.

And if nothing else, I can look back on the last 10+ years of us pursuing our family-building, there's been a majority of No's with one very important Yes. That Yes not only makes me trust all the No's but find them comforting. If wounds from a friend can be trusted, then how much more can I trust the God that created me and this family. He's got this.

So, here's to 2011. Hoping for a Yes somewhere in there but trusting if there's not.