Right about this time last year, while practicing his "flight" skills, #2 took a dive into our window sill. Poor little guy's nose bled and swelled........and he cried and cried and cried. After some time and no relief from the pain, I brought #2 to our children's hospital emergency room. While waiting in our room for the doctor to arrive, we were assigned a sweet-as-can-be nurse who treated #2 with such genuine kindness. As we started to talk, I noticed she had a picture of a little girl on the back of her ID tag. The nurse explained that the little girl was her four year old daughter adopted from China.....the last of four kids.....the older three biological. The doctor then entered the picture....#2 got an x-ray of his nose (thankfully no broken bones) and we again had to wait for the doctor to arrive with further recommendations. #2 had fallen asleep on my lap and the nurse didn't have other duties besides attending to him. We got to chatting. Me and my curious self very much wanted to find out more about her cute little girl and what led this mommy to international adoption but I didn't want to pry. Then, in a very out of the blue way, she said, "I noticed earlier you seemed interested in my family and our adoption. I'm open to answering any questions you might have." :) The floodgate of questions opened. I must of asked her a million. Sure, I asked her procedural questions....."How long was the process start to finish?", "How did you decide on a country?". After we talked procedure (and because she seemed pleased to tell her story), I was comfortable asking the deeper questions......"Is the love you feel for your bio kids any different than the love you feel for your adopted daughter?", "Did you ever feel like you were taking away from your bio kids by adopting?". #2 was still sleeping on my lap, we were STILL waiting for the doctor to arrive and the nurse and I both had tears streaming down our faces. I was crying because A. It doesn't take much for this girl to cry and B. I was so touched by this woman's story! The love she felt for her daughter was...well...beautiful. I don't know why my new nurse-friend was crying too. I can only guess that she felt as emotional relating her experience as I was listening to her. When the physician finally arrived, she was surprised to see two tear-streaked faces :) #2 and I arrived home past midnight. I then told husband about my nurse-friend and our conversation. I started crying again telling him this story (not surprising) and husband's eyes got a little watery too (very surprising!). So, yes, the adoption seed had been planted. It wasn't the only seed that led us down this path but it was a significant step towards choosing adoption.
And of course, I have God to thank. I am more than aware that in the most unfortunate of circumstances, He put an ER nurse and a gal that needed to hear a sweet adoption story together.
