Every time we choose to love other mortal beings, someday, we will have to give them back.
“Cute baby,” strangers said when they saw her.
“Your first?” they asked. And when we told them she was our foster daughter, that we might have to return her to her biological mother, I watched them step back.
“I couldn’t do that,” they said.
“I’ll pray for you,” they said.
I didn’t know if I could do it, either. But I also knew it’s what we do every time we choose to love another mortal being. Someday, we will have to give them back too.
On the first of many court dates, we met her biological mother. In the courtroom hallway, I raised the blanket covering the stroller so she could see her daughter, the baby she’d birthed just two weeks before.
“Could I please hold her?” she asked.
She was tender, cradled the baby’s tiny body, cooed. She cried, held the baby close to her chest. “I love you too much,” she whispered, again and again.
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