Hospital Discharge, welcoming baby home. Family and friends celebrate my new daughter. Meals are ordered, gifts are showered, hearts are falling in love. A baby has joined our family. We celebrate, we pour lavish doses of love into our daughter. Yet, our family is holding a breath while giving it all. Along with our beautiful daughter, the maybe days have arrived.

I breathe in her savory newborn scent. I learn to speak her language. I know what every grunt, whimper, cry, and wiggle mean. I know her hunger cues, and her satisfied sighs. She is my daughter and I am her mother. Yet, for how long will I be given the honor of this title?

The maybe days are in full swing. Our family settles into a regular routine. Siblings adjust to their new sister. Love continues to flow. Hearts are growing. Every member is affected by the deep love they feel for the new baby. She is passed from waiting lap to waiting lap. How long will they get the honor of being her big brothers and sister?

The maybe days still linger, yet as those first days and weeks turn to months, we almost forget about the maybe days. The thoughts are always there in the back of each family member’s mind…but comfortable routines of daily life, meals, church, school, doctor’s visits have made us relax a bit into normalcy. But the normalcy can all be turned upside down with one phone call… That’s the way the maybe days go. Today you are a family, but forever is only a maybe…

The phone rings on her 3 month Birthday. She might be placed with another family….. maybe…This means my time as her mommy may be ending….maybe….The whole world stops. I can’t hear or take in a full breath. My children don’t quite know, but they know. The maybe has resurfaced loud and clear. Our baby maybe won’t be staying. Our family shifts to our only rock in this Earth: Jesus.

We pray His will be done, while begging for a miracle. His will is perfect and we trust Him all through the biggest maybe we’ve ever felt. Again, friends draw close just as they did at her homecoming. They draw near with prayers and love. They have embarked on this journey with our family and the emotions of the maybe days stretch to family and friends.

Another foster mommy, one who knows the fear of the maybe days all too well, intervenes with a miracle and our baby girl gets to remain part of our family. The maybe days stay, but for today she is our daughter.

Again routines fall back into place. Seasons change, and life continues. Each month on the day of her birth, I celebrate another month that I have continued to be given the honor of being her mommy. I allow myself to dream…Could I possibly get this honor forever? The answer to my question….maybe…

The phone rings. My heart pounds as I recognize the number. The case manager. She only calls with big news. My mind spins and swirls. Again, I find it hard to take a full breath. I fear the worst. But my fears lessen as I hear a new word this time: Adoption…yet it still has another word attached…maybe. Adoption maybe…

The next few months are full of homestudy visits, interviews, guardian visits, and I happily invite each appointment, each new paper to complete. In my heart, I can feel it…. My maybe days are coming to a close.

My whole heart was given to my daughter the very moment they placed her into my arms. The night I met her, I walked into a dark and buzzing NICU and I was handed a miracle in the earth. A little miracle who had been on her own in the hospital without a mommy. She was cared for meticulously by skilled doctors, nurses, and volunteers, but she didn’t have a mommy there with her in those first few weeks until the Lord sent me to her. Those first few moments that we met, the whole world stopped. I held her close. I told her how beautiful, and brave and strong she was. I told her that the Lord had big plans for her life. I told her that I would be her mommy for however long I was appointed. I told her I would protect her, care for her, and that I loved her. Just as a mother falls immediately in love with a child they birth into the earth, I was immediately hers and she was mine. I willingly gave her everything I had even knowing that I would only MAYBE get to be her forever mommy.

Something amazing happened in the earth yesterday, I signed the adoption paperwork and our finalization date is set for this month. Our maybe days are ending, and I will no longer have to wonder how long I have been appointed as mommy. Maybe Days will be forever replaced with two beautiful and much awaited words….we will become a Forever Family.