A Reminder of Seasons

And The Relief They Are Ever-changing

Hello, my dear friend.

Thank you for still being here after my month of silence in June.

I missed this space and the privilege of being allowed to grab your attention, even if just for a moment. During my time away I hit a few milestones and it reminded me about seasons—and the relief that they are ever-changing. On June 15th, we marked four precious years with our son. He waddled into our doorway and hearts on June 15th, 2021 and we haven’t been the same since. And then, funny enough, the next day, June 16th made four years since my book was released.

When we were in the NICU after Anne Rollins was born, a lactation specialist came to our room. She gave me a sideways look and then said, “Oh yea! You’re the girl that wrote that book.” It took me a minute to recall that I actually did write one. I’d never felt further from the woman I once was. Not because I was forgetting the road that lead me to my children, but in a way that reminds us that God isn’t done with us in the eye of the storm.

While I work on some fresh content and love letters to send you, I wanted to share with you my favorite chapter from my book, Having A Baby & Other Things I’m Bad At. To see where God has taken us leaves me truly speechless.

I’ve chopped up the chapter in bits and bobs because it’s quite long. Over 24,000 words. If you want to keep reading, here is my shameless plug: my book is on Amazon and it’s currently Amazon Prime week. It can be on your door step by Sunday.

Talk soon.

Thank you for being here,

Bailey

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About a year ago, my husband casually mentioned over dinner that he recently had several dreams about us adopting a child. This man, who never dreams, and if he does, he can’t remember them by morning; was now sharing with me dreams that felt more like prophetic visions in the same tone he tells me about his golf game. In a familiar monotonous inflection, he told me of two more a few days later. I stood speechless each time with a flame of panic in my throat, because it was around that time that I too, had dreams of adopting a son.

We stared at each other in a silent standoff, as if what we were about to discuss was so secretive that our walls and furniture couldn’t even know. What better place to have a discussion such as that, but in the spare room? After careful consideration and several miles of pacing, we decided to start with fostering.

Over the next several weeks, we laid out our plan and began the process of becoming registered foster parents. In a pre-Covid world, this process would’ve been an in-person course that lasted three days. We would’ve met in a church basement in downtown Jackson, Mississippi and listened to a social worker go through the logistics of raising a child that isn’t yours and the horror stories of what those kids could’ve suffered. But being that we were riding out the midst of this in the dead center of 2020, all courses, lessons, and horror stories were now shared over Zoom.

The whole assembly was a bit more invasive than either of us had expected. The state wanted to know our history and childhood backgrounds. They needed to explore our incomes, how we fought, what church we went to, and if either of us had experienced sexual traumas. The questions leading up to our home study resembled more of an interrogation than an interview. We were becoming employees of the state, who would receive money per child, and as such we needed to get our fingerprints done at the local office of Department of Human Services. I’d never been more thankful for a mask that day. The blue fabric covering my stunned mouth was a shield I didn’t know I would need. Our expedition to parenthood had taken quite the fall.

We had started off in crisp white offices of well-renowned experts in infertility. The local IVF specialist had his own interior designer stage the foyer comfortably for potential parents to relax in. You could fall into tufted club chairs as they served tea and coffee and organic candy bars while a Norah Jones Pandora station echoed above. Nurses would pat you on the shoulder as you perused through pamphlets of treatments that cost more than a semester at a state college. Those days of lab work and genetic surveys in spotless waiting rooms seemed like they happened in another life by that morning. We walked into a brown brick building that was hidden behind an old factory off the side of a highway and waited for a very overworked and underpaid social worker to call our names for fingerprints. I sat across from Kyle at a leaning card table with three legs and began to count the dead roaches that lay belly up in the corner.

Seven.

The blinds were dusty and hanging on by a thread as a hand-written poster on the adjacent wall reminded me to smile at a stranger that day. We knew that we lived in the poorest state with the most broken child welfare system in the country. The evidence of such statistics presented to us now over Zoom calls describing child molestation, and disheveled state-run offices. I didn’t feel above the situation, quite the opposite. We didn’t consider ourselves too good for it. We were only collapsing with exhaustion at having made this decision so quickly, surprised at our arrival here. And terribly nervous for what was to come.

I cleared my throat to speak. “If someone had told me this is where we would end up, I wouldn’t have believed them. If anyone had mentioned this to me years ago, I would have politely told them this is not for us. Kyle, what the hell are we doing here?”

He told me he wasn’t sure. Our confidence was wavering, but none of our alarm bells were going off. Tears collected in the corner of my eyes just as the social worker returned our drivers licenses and social security cards. I tilted my chin towards my chest in an effort to hide my red face, once again thankful for the mask to hide most of my emotions. I was trying to understand the faith and strength it would take for someone to take a child into their home, fall madly in love with them, feed them, hold them, and in a moment’s notice—prepare to lose them. “Do you want to leave?” Kyle asked. I didn’t. I wasn’t wild about any of this. This foreign concept to procure a child through a government agency. The immediacy of taking in a child we don’t know for an unknown amount of time. This wasn’t the plan. This is not what I had dreamed of. But I knew in the pit of my stomach, we were exactly where we needed to be.

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Two months before the room change and the home study, I was introduced to a woman who would quickly become one of my most treasured friends. Lindsey is tall and has an infectious laugh. Her dark hair makes her bright eyes shine in contrast and she is incredibly intelligent. She is a get things done kind of woman who is known to study a menu days in advance so she has enough time to carefully consider her order. And she reminds me of my mother in a way that allows me to trust her with my life. Lindsey is a lobbyist. She works extremely hard to not be defined by her career, but when the legislature is in session, and her bills get passed, she is a sight for sore eyes. Lindsey and I fell into a new group of friends around the same time. And for the first time in my adult life, I had women around me who I didn’t feel the need to compete with or hide from. Our little group bonded over our transparency on life and grief. Our cards were always on the table, face up. We challenged each other in our successes and failures. Our goals and ideas, theologies and politics. And we could cackle over our raunchy sense of humor for hours on end.

Not long after adopting two children of her own from the unforgiving foster care system, Lindsey pioneered a spiritual retreat for women. The idea being that if you secluded yourself into the mountains, with no phone service, no makeup, no speaking, and if you choose, no eating; then you could heal yourself of just about anything and settle whatever you needed between you and God. The retreat was based on a book called The Gift of the Red Bird by Paula D’Arcy. The author documents her own retreat of solitude after losing her child and husband in a brutal car crash. Paula was so desperate to heal from her grief, she voyaged into the Texas desert alone for four days with no food, little water, and zero contact to the world, stripping herself of her senses and bare necessities. Her only friend to guide her to healing was a red cardinal. The story is very similar to Wild by Cheryl Strayed, just without the heroin addiction.

Lindsey inviting me to this sacred retreat felt not only like a huge honor, but an altar call I couldn’t not answer. I had my marching orders. For the weeks leading up to the retreat I would practice fasting, make sure I had hiking boots, and get settled into the idea of not speaking. Like at all.

The retreat couldn’t have come at a better time. We had just finished painting a crib for a child whose name I didn’t know and wasn’t sure they even existed. Kyle put the cradle together, and as if we were in a choreographed routine; handed me a paint brush as he put down the drill. His role was to erect the fixture, while mine was to paint it and try not to let my bitter anxiety get in the way of such a simple task. I painted the crib a light shade of sage and tried not to fall in love with the idea of being a parent to a stranger.

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I made my way back through the same trail and found that I was relieved to have not had some epiphany from God. There is no need to receive all the answers at once. We don’t need all the answers at once. He doesn’t owe me an explanation for my flaws or grief. Life is a continued slow dance of hushed yeses with Him. We continue to work on saying yes to Him, which will always be better than saying yes to self. That lesson is to be learned day after day after day.

Our trip ended on an overcast Sunday and by the time I got home, the sweet gum tree that could be viewed from the spare room was changing her colors under the autumn air once again. Another season was coming to a close, and another was just beginning. After I unpacked my luggage and kissed my husband who I missed probably too much, I made my trustedal dente pasta with butter and crushed pepper and cozied up to the idea of waiting in grief and not expecting anything from it. I scanned the spare room and sank down next to the door, once again to soak in the tree, and the empty crib, and the seasons, and the waiting. A peaceful stillness stirred over me and I knew the room may sit empty for a while. Kyle came up behind me to close the door, and has he smiled at me, I realized that I was actually breathing in perfect rhythm.