Gabriel is admittedly the least nurturing of the three Archangels found in the canonical the Bible. Raphael is genuinely helpful, pretending to be a long lost kinsman and guiding Tobias on his journey. He protects him, helps him obtain the salves to restore his father's sight and assists him in exorcising a wind demon from his future wife. Michael is generally observed at a distance, not so much interacting with humanity but intervening on our behalf and appearing in visions. He's God's muscle, generally seen protecting Israel, kicking-ass for God at the End of Days and casting down Satan in the spirit realm. Gabriel on the other hand, is a no-nonsense angel.
Take this example: the angel Gabriel comes to Zechariah and announces, "Your prayer has been heard, your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John."
"Um, aren't we a little old for that?"
It's a seemingly innocent question to an incredible announcement. I mean you're in the temple, an angel appears and starts prophesying and you're old, your wife is old. You haven't had kids yet and who knows if you'll even live to see the kid graduate from college?
Gabriel's response: "OK, fine, you're mute."
No encouragement. No, "don't worry, it will be great, children are gifts from God." No, "really, God has big plans for this boy." Just this sudden affliction for more-or-less thinking out loud.
So you can imagine I was pretty uncomfortable when on our third adoption attempt, my wife Nancy suggested that we name the child "Gabrielle". Gabriel is not someone you want to cross.
When we selected our adoption agency (technically it's not an agency, but a facilitator service, but for ease of terminology, we'll refer to it as our agency) one of the big selling points was their disruption rate. A disruption is what happens when a birth family chooses you to be adoptive parents and then changes their mind. The grand majority of these are because after the birth the birth parent chooses to keep the child, which on some level is entirely natural and justifiable. But at the same time, as we discovered, these events are nonetheless emotionally devastating. You keep going over the encounter wondering was it us? Was it something I said or did? In reality, it most likely isn't a rejection of you, but the overwhelming connection a parent feels for their child. Yet all that self-doubt is caught up with feelings of powerlessness and made all-the-worse by anxiety and frustration for lost time, because while you were waiting months for the finalization of the adoption that just fell through the agency wasn't showing your profile to other prospective birth families.
The unpublished disruption rate quoted us by our agency was somewhere around 10%. Which seemed like pretty good odds: 9 out of 10 of the adoptions went through. My wife and I have always considered ourselves lucky and "above the mean", so we figured we had nothing to worry about, but 2 disruptions later, with a personal disruption rate of 100%, and all the anguish and waiting, that rate seems laughably understated. If the numbers are correct, then statistically, we should have had a 1% chance of being where we are now. Yet here we are. Now, when we've mentioned that number to other agencies, we've gotten some raised eyebrows. Even the more reputable agencies put their disruption numbers at closer to 25% and in some communities (like the Hispanic community - which I consider myself a part of) the rates are as high as 50%! Whatever the true rate is, this much we know: after our first disruption, people came out of the woodwork to announce that they or someone they knew had gone through the same thing. Thanks for the heads up guys!
On our first match we went through what many expectant parents go through: we bought a diaper genie, a glider, a stroller, a crib, a car seat, lullaby CDs. We did so as part nesting behavior, part necessity and most of all fantasy. We got wrapped up in our expectations for the future and why not? Biological parents get to go through it, why couldn't we? Families are born out of the pangs of labor, but for us, that wasn't going to occur, so we wanted as much of the experience as life would allow. That's what being expectant is all about, you're preparing physically and mentally for a change that is about to come; no one refers to surprise parents (although those do exist). And part of those preparations involve choosing a name for the child to be.
On both of our matches we didn't know the gender of the child in advance so we chose a boy's and girl's name. For reasons of superstition, I won't mention the boy's name, but since we've used the girl's name, I'll mention that it was "Sophia Rose". I don't know if other parents have experienced the same, but there was something about the name that just seemed right when we spoke it. We hadn't even met the child yet, but we knew that was the name. On the second match we were on our way to the hospital and Nancy mentioned the name "Isabel" and it seemed like a name coming out of the guff.
In adoptions, the birth mom has the right to fill out whichever name she wants on the birth certificate. Later when the adoption is finalized, the certificate is legally changed to reflect the adoptive parents given and family name and depending on the state you adopt in, the revised certificate is called different things. In our first adoption attempt the birth mom decided after hearing our intended name that she was going to name the child Sophia Mary, which I imagine is still the child's legal name. I find it ironic that despite our exit from the child's life, we've left a permanent brand on her as a reminder that at one time, we were slated to be her parents.
Sophia is Greek for "wisdom", the basis of the word "Philo-sophia" or "love of wisdom", but in the Judeo-Christian tradition, sophos is particularly the Wisdom of God. And who wouldn't want their child to be possessed of the Wisdom of God? Sophia Rose, we thought was just brilliant: God's Wisdom became flesh in Mary, who is referred to as "the blessed rose". So "Sophia Rose" is a designation for The Incarnation - and how could God not be "well pleased" with that? God however, had a very different take on things as did the birth mom who decided not to give the child up for adoption. The epic collapse of that adoption attempt will be covered in a future blog called, "The Most Expensive Movie Ticket I've Ever Bought."
The second match occurred 7 months later. We continued, this time more slowly, to furnish the child's room, wondering if our persistence in being "expectant parents" was being seen by God as being presumptive. At the same time, over and over again, I remember the priest on our wedding day enjoining us that, "let there be no purpose in marriage save the creation of children". The Church and presumably God wanted us to form a family. They wanted us to have children, didn't they? So why the infertility? Why the disruption? Isn't this what was promised to us when we faithfully joined in Marriage?
8 weeks before the second match, Nancy became pregnant again and we cautiously thought that perhaps this was "why" we didn't have success on the first match - perhaps we were supposed to have the "full experience" of being expectant parents. But the week prior to our second match, Nancy began to spot and having been through 4 prior miscarriages we knew the likely outcome. We went back to the OB/GYN and had an ultrasound that confirmed that there was no cardiac activity and lab work showed a falling and abnormally low pregnancy hormone, all consistent with inevitable miscarriage and a now-nonviable fetus. We scheduled the D&C.
I was home when we received the call from the agency announcing that they had another match for us; it was the day after we realized we were miscarrying and the day before Nancy's procedure. This time it was a teenage birth mom just an hour's drive away. The birth mom had delayed selecting an adoptive family until the very last minute and was due within the next week. At one point, I was actually speaking with the agency while they were preop-ing Nancy for her procedure. It felt sick and wrong.
Two days after Nancy's procedure, on a Saturday morning, we received a call from the agency that the birth mom had gone into labor. Nancy was still cramping after the procedure and it seemed like some black, cosmic joke. How do you go from disruption to miscarriage to "expectant" while still bleeding from a D&C? How do you make sense of all the emotions? We were grieving the loss of one child and hoping for success with the match. At the same time secretly we wondered in horror, did God intend for this child to replace the one we lost? How could that be and why would He do that?
With everything going so quickly, we hadn't even had time to think of names for the child. We were on the drive to the hospital when Nancy asked, "what will we name her? I don't feel right calling her Sophia." I agreed completely. Having given that name to one child, it didn't seem right to try to use it again. To do so would imply that the two children were interchangeable - which clearly was not the case any more than this child could replace the one we had just lost.
Nancy took out her smart phone and started looking at names. She suggested Isabel which surprised me as some months prior I had mentioned Isabel as a possibility and she hadn't seemed keen on it at all. At the time, I thought it would sound good with my Hispanic surname and liked the nickname Izzy - it sounded feminine and playful but at the same time reminded me of royalty, like queen Isabella of Spain. And when I thought about women I had known named Isabel they had all been stunningly beautiful and seemingly joy-filled. I had never really looked at the meaning, I just liked the sound of it, the associations I made with it. I liked it because I liked it.
Then Nancy read the meaning, "It says, of Hebrew origin meaning 'God's Promise'. Spanish variant of Elizabeth..." As she read it, I had that sense of excitement and connection and a little bit of burning in the recesses of my nose that said I was about to weep tears of joy. We instantly knew it was the name for this child. This child was going to be the fulfillment of God's promise, the promise he made to Abraham when he promised to make his descendents as numerous as the stars, the promise we presumed implicit in our marriage vows. But moreso, the meaning of Elizabeth was special for us. Nancy and I have been told that our fertility challenge is the result of "advanced maternal age", which is the polite way of your doctor telling you, "Sorry, you waited too long". Elizabeth was old, thought barren, but she conceived John the Baptist. Remember Gabriel and Zechariah? He was Elizabeth's husband.
We arrived at the hospital to find that despite this being the birth mom's first birth, her labor was very short. From her water breaking to delivery was less than 4 hours, so we arrived to find Isabel in her mother's arms. Meeting the birth parents is incredibly awkward, and all-the-more difficult when the birth parent is a teen. We felt this incredible sense of scrutiny. Are we cool enough? Are we the kind of parents they would have wanted for themselves? When they imagine us as their baby's family, are they comforted, is it familiar or foreign and is that good or bad? There is an old saying that you can't choose your family, but adoption turns that on it's head and makes it a mandate: choose.
We chatted a little bit and my face began to ache from the perma-grin that was there. We wanted to appear comfortable and warm and the birth mom was accompanied by an entourage of her talkative and inquisitive teenage friends and her sister. Shortly thereafter a nurse announced that they would be bringing the birth certificate for the birth mom to complete, which naturally brought up the topic of names. The newly made aunt, the birth mom's sister, said, "we were thinking of the name Isabella" and it instantly erupted into a bond, a conversation, a sign that for certain this was indeed God's promise! The birth mom noted, "this is the most perfect thing I've ever done." We agreed with her at first, but something about her statement troubled me.
Several days later, after taking baby Isabel home and living with her, feeding her, changing her and believing she would be our child, the birth mother reneged and requested the baby be returned to her. When we left the hospital on day 2, we had been given only temporary custody of the child. The law in our state stipulates that the birth mother may not surrender her parental rights prior to 72 hours. In the day after Isabel's discharge, the birth mom's attachments grew until the most perfect thing she had ever done became the one thing she couldn't bear to surrender. Our adoption journey was beginning to seem like some postmodernist novel, where things that should signify something actually signify nothing; where signs and symbols have no referent.
Which brings us to where we are now, waiting for Gabriel.
The word angel comes from the greek angelos which means "messenger", which is actually a translation of the word for messenger from the Hebrew, mal'akh. In the Bible, God would send messengers to guide and advise his people, so much so that the word became synonymous with divine messengers. I've come to realize that in times of uncertainty, in times of want and suffering I turn to God for comfort, I look for messages. I want to know if he is well pleased. I want to know if I'm "on the right track". I want to know what he has planned for us. But it seems that guessing at the mind of God and looking for signposts in coincidence leads to nothing but heartbreak and disappointment. In my life's journey, the repeated lesson is that God writes straight with crooked lines and answers our prayers in His own way and His own time. But He is always there. For "not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the Lord looks into the heart".
If we're lucky, if you believe in miracles and the scripture, sometimes God has such an important message to send that he dispatches one of his messengers to you, one of his angels. And if forced to choose between a mysterious stranger pretending to be a guide like Raphael, visions and dreams that require revelation like Michael, or a messenger who shows up and says, "Let me lay it out for you straight: this is the way it's going to be", I'd opt for the latter. When Gabriel shows up he gets to the point, you know where you stand and what he expects. He expects an epic "Yes" to take back to God; he expects Mary's response, "let it be done to me according to your will."
And so we wait, knowing that we are ready with our "yes", whether our angel is Gabrielle or some other child. We wait patiently with faith, hope and love.
