The Green Couch - a time of transition

Dear Friends,

Let me tell you about my green couch. During a time in my life when I was going through a transition, I think I sat on that green couch for most of the day, every day. When I think of the green couch - a bright green corduroy couch that sat perpendicular to the front windows of the house in Tracy - it seems as if I sat on that couch all the time, for about 2 years. You can tell me that couldn't be true - and of course, it isn't completely true - but that's how long I sat on that green couch, at least in my memory.

I'd had a difficult couple of years. I had conflict in my work - the work I was certain I was chosen to do in this life - and my husband, Jeff, and I had been waiting for a baby girl we were adopting from Guatemala. Her name was Anali Julia - "little Anali," I called her, and still call her - and we had traveled to Guatemala in the autumn of 1990 to meet her for the first time. When the blanket over her face was opened, she smiled up at me, our first meeting as mother and daughter. The nurse who was caring for her in her own home in Guatemala said: "Zu mama," "your mother." I fell in love that first evening when Jeff was gone on an errand and Anali and I were alone for the first time. She was fussing a bit, and I was uncertain what to do for her. So I said a prayer to the Mother, the Mother of us all: "Help me!" As I said the prayer, little Anali looked into my eyes, and I knew we were meant for each other.

And we were! Jeff and I returned home to California to wait for the adoption to be processed in Guatemala so that we could return and bring the baby home. We waited a long time - longer than the adoption agency had suggested we'd wait - until we heard that little Anali's birth mother had taken her back with her. Two more times we completed the paper work for a baby girl from Guatemala, and two more times our efforts failed. The third baby girl died of a heart condition in Guatemala.

The day of the news about the baby's death, I raised my hands into the air and said: "Ok, God, I let go of the wheel of my life!" I didn't know what else to do.

What did I do then? I sat on that green couch until the day I had to get up and get moving again. Grief takes all the time it needs. Grief has its own life.

Maybe you're sitting on a green couch today. Don't despair. Your sorrow, your transition, your waiting is moving you in a direction you cannot yet see. Don't get up from the green couch until it's time.

meb