I can hardly believe that this day is really here. I remember the first time I thought about this day and what it might be like. I was in a hospital bed on the floor where I work. Steve had left a few hours before to get some rest at home. He was trying to work, come visit me everyday and still keep everything running at home for when I would return. He was tired, but he sat with me, took me on walk around to all the places I usually went as a nurse. And we talked.
I was coming to the end of an 18-day stay and was finally beginning to feel better from what can only be described as the worst physical pain I had ever experienced. Little did I know the emotional pain was around the corner, waiting for me, and the Lord mercifully let me experience these two pains separately from one another. For that I am incredibly grateful.
We talked about our plans to adopt even though we had just found out my body would never and could have never carried a child. Again, the Lord had blessed me all those years of desperately pleading for a baby by not putting one in my body. But I knew we would adopt even before all this had happened. Before surgeries to discover what problems may exist in my body. We were in the temple together with some of our family, and I knew that day.
But on this night in the hospital we talked about when we would start the paperwork. We decided in a few months, after the current storm of our lives had blown over a little more and I felt strong again. We talked about what our child might look like, where they would come from, and how we hoped the baby would not have my feet or Steve's pale skin. We were excited and we talked about many different possibilities of babies. We laughed and held each other and dreamed. Then he left for home.
I lay in that bed, in that dark room I had only known with lights on and thinking of what I needed to accomplish while in there. Now it was my home. And I thought of this day. I thought of being in the temple with our baby, sealing that baby to us for eternity. I thought of how strange it would feel to take a baby into the temple, a place where usually only adults go to make covenants with the Lord. I thought of how everyone would know what we were doing there just because we carried a baby through the halls and how they would smile at us. I thought of our family and friends and the joy I knew they would feel too as they witnessed our little miracle be sealed to us on that day. But most of all I thought about the overwhelming joy and happiness and immense gratitude I would feel that the Lord had granted me most heartfelt desire. A baby. Forever sealed to me and to Steve.
This day is here.
