When we were introduced to the Embryo Adoption process we were told about two embryos in particular that had been waiting a LONG time and been passed over by many couples. They didn’t know for sure why these two had been waiting so long but figured it might have something to do with not having all of the genetic father’s medical history on file or because there were only two in the batch – making the statistics of a “successful” procedure that much less likely.
We instantly felt a connection with these two embryos and did everything in our power to have the paperwork go through as quickly as possible. Unfortunately much of it ended up being out of our control.
Then after many months of plugging along we had finally jumped through the last of the hoops and were told that we were going to be presented to the donor following the weekend. The following Monday we got a call from our social worker explaining that we had just missed the opportunity. The donor had gotten tired of waiting and had pulled the embryos from the program days before we could have been presented to her.
What had happened to them? Had she changed her mind and decided to grow her family? Had she decided she wasn’t going to sink any more money into sustaining their lives in frozen storage? One of those seemed more likely than the other but we would never know for sure.
Even though we had never had a right to them, the loss still stung deeply. We had months of investing our emotions and dreams into “What ifs” that involved them and had been so sure they were the reason we had been called into this.
Fortunately we had learned our lesson from the first miscarriage and invited the Father into this grief right away instead of trying to bury it. It still hurt like crazy, and it made the chance of loss so much more real. But we felt a deeper understanding of His perspective much quicker this time. We didn’t just know, but felt, that even if the worst had happened they were with Him now, and His love was far greater for them than ours. That was the only perspective we were guaranteed a positive outcome in. The eternal one. Temporally this whole process could end in the same heartache and dashed dreams that the miscarriage, diagnosis and closed adoption doors had brought.
So – that perspective, the eternal one, was the one we had to cling to while our Father brought us weeping through the other.
Rusty.
The Good Argentumware. 