Best. Halloween. EVER.

This Sunday is Orphan Sunday, and I am sharing our adoption story at church.  I spent a chunk of Monday writing out our journey and thinking through the underlying themes of what I should say. 

Later that night I’m with some friends and meet a new couple.  They are strangers, and wife politely asks about the Bean (noticing he’s ‘different’): “Would you mind telling me a little more about why you adopted?”   (which was such a polite, kind way to ask).

Remember I literally JUST practiced my adoption story only hours beforehand. 

I begin to share, and after I’m done, I’ve noticed the children (once rowdy) are quiet and in another room, and the parents have all gathered around in the living room listening.  Stillness and peace.

Husband says, with lots of emotion, “It’s really amazing to hear your story.  Because I was adopted.  I just found my birthmother.  I made contact with my birth uncle last week.  It’s been so emotional for me.” 

And rivers of vulnerability rush downstream, to me, a complete stranger, about this HUGE momentous part of his story, and I begin to well up with tears, and he does too. 

Because he suffered a loss.  And the Bean suffered a loss. 

But his loss is not him.  And the Bean’s loss is not him either.

He was given a beautiful family, and security, and values, and confidence, and Jesus, and he was WELL LOVED, and he was sensitive to his parents, and worried about hurting them, and he was curious about his story, and I understood why it mattered.  He shares about looking in his son’s eyes wondering where they came from and I share my grief that the Bean’s story is vacant and skeletal.   

The room is heavy, and the emotion is deep, and we stare at each other because it feels just too random, and we feel an unexplainable connection—a unity—like we are part of a family.

We get in the car and drive home.  Bookguy turns and says, “That was incredible.”  “Yeah,” I say. 

Best. Halloween. EVER.