Imperfect

Our last class was yesterday. It was a beautiful day. I started off by seeing beauty in someone that I would not have noticed in the past. I was sitting in a doctors office waiting to speak to the doctor, I was probably the only person in the entire room under the age of 70 years old. There was a half a dozen patients waiting to see the doctor... and in walks a woman who was most likely in her mid seventies. She had khaki baggy linen pants on with tan sandles and a matching tan leather bag. The woman stood out because she had this pretty teal blue shirt that caught my eye, I could not take my eyes off the color of her shirt. She walked into the office alone. As she approached the front desk she pulled out a gadget underneath her pretty teal shirt and put it in her hand and raised it to her throat. It was an electrolarynx, a voice machine that made her voice sound like a computer. She just had her larynx removed most likely due to cancer. I was startled by the noise at first and could not take my eyes off of her like most others in the room. I could not understand every word she was saying however I began to notice something that brought tears to my eyes. She was smiling, she was making jokes and laughing..... This older woman went from having a beautiful teal shirt to radiating beauty from within her. This woman was alone, she had just gone through a major life change, and she was accepting of her way. And so it was her imperfection that made her beautiful. I went into our meeting with the image of this woman yesterday and looked around at all the other couples who would soon be in waiting for their child too. Some couples were young, some were older, some were straight and others were gay. Every couple in this meeting was embracing their way, the life that they were carving out for themselves. Each person there yesterday had not gotten to this point by imitating someone else's life, they saw the beauty in their own, and so began their own adoption story.

So I say today what I heard on the film Tuesday something that resonated deep within...."Tis better to live your own life imperfectly than to imitate someone else's life perfectly." That imperfection is what led us to this amazing journey....