Hurry Up and Wait

Whoa. Like serious whoa. I'd like for life to slow down just a bit, but I have a feeling it's not going to in the least. The last several weeks have been filled to the absolute brim. I'm pretty sure I could sleep for 24 hours straight right about now. I just completed the busiest season of the year at work, which is always a huge relief, but with maternity leave looming, I'm already preparing for time away. No rest for the weary.

In November, we took a few days off of work and traveled to Colorado. The purpose of the trip was to spread my father's ashes. He passed away last October and this trip had been in the works since then. Colorado is special to me, quite possibly the most special place on earth, and it was to my dad too. We were both born in Fort Collins, Colorado...it's one thing we had in common during seasons of life when I would have sworn that that was the only thing we shared. My relationship with my father was tenuous at best and volatile at worst during the last twenty years. He was a complicated man. We had not spoken in years and our last conversation was not one that I remember fondly. To find a happy memory, I must go further back to a conversation that, believe it or not, centered around Colorado. He wanted to take me skiing again. While I was far, far wiser as an adult and wary of getting my hopes up, I'll admit that the spark of childhood memories blossomed in me. The memories of skiing with my dad are undoubtedly some of the very best of my childhood. We never made that trip.

Taking my dad back to Colorado was important to me...hard, but in some way healing. It's a place that we uniquely shared. The longing for the mountains, well, I think it's something we will both keep for all the days of our lives. It was his and still is my wish to eventually move back to Colorado. This was my way of taking him home.

The trip was hard. My emotions ran hot and cold, but my anxiety was also high. It had been over seven and a half years since I had last flown, and wow. Let's just was my anxiety has not gotten better over the years. So yeah, I was an anxious, emotional mess trying to honor my dad and spend some quality time with my family while also analyzing how I'm seriously unprepared for 15 hour flights to and from China. It was a complicated week. The highlight was certainly getting Garrison out on the slopes. I don't know when or if my little family will make it back out to Colorado...life's about to get a whole heck of a lot messier and more chaotic, so it was really special that I got to see my little nugget doing what I so desperately loved as a child. I know he's likely too young that these memories will remain, but they will always be there for me, and for that I'm thankful. My mom and I made a few runs as well. It was cathartic really. For so many years it was mom and I against the world. It felt good to end the trip with a memory that we both shared from so long ago.

We returned from our trip and quickly got spun into the adoption journey again. On December 7, we were notified that our dossier was out of review. Basically, at that point, China had said yes to us as a family; we simply had to wait for them to say yes to our match with our son. We received our Letter of Acceptance on December 11, and since then it's been full steam ahead. But now, we wait. Soon we will be jumping through some more hoops. And then we'll wait. Rinse and repeat.

We are currently waiting on approval from US Citizenship and Immigration Services. If you remember hearing that before, it's because we've been here before. Basically, you apply the first time to adopt a child from a specific country, but the child in question is vague...just a general outline (boy/girl, age range, etc). Then you apply again for your specific child. We should have approval any day now. From here, there's a whole slew of acronyms and numbers that no one outside of the international adoption community would understand, but basically each is a step in the process to receiving approval from China to travel. We must have approval before we can truly schedule our trip.

Estimates on travel right now are March, with an early estimate that we could meet our son on February 26...well except that I work for a church. It's a long story, but visas are becoming more and more complicated to procure and due to my place of employment, our travel could be delayed by two-ish weeks. Believe me, that's a tough place to sit. To know that your child is spending additional nights in an orphanage, even if it's a great one with loving ayis and exceptional care, is really, really hard. And so we wait. And then we sprint to jump over the next hurdle. And then we wait. Slowly but surely, we're inching closer to our boy.

Christmas this year was a little hard. I felt a lot of guilt about celebrating while our son sleeps in an orphanage each night. I didn't know the right way to honor him and still celebrate with the family that we have here. I didn't want to diminish Garrison's Christmas or sit around pouting and bemoaning what we don't have in the midst of a season of great joy and hope. Thursday, December 21, was the winter solstice and as such it was the longest night. It was a poignant moment for me as I reflected that for both my son and I, the days are getting longer, the nights are getting shorter, and with each turn of the earth, we are one day closer to one another. We ended up ordering his stocking and hanging it with ours. He received a few small gifts in his stocking just like Garrison. To help Garrison understand that his brother is a real, live person and not just an imaginary friend, we packed up all of his gifts and mailed them to him. Hopefully he receives his package in the coming weeks and on some lever knows that he is loved and his family is coming for him, racing the sun to hold him.

We're still about $7,000 away from our total for adoption expenses, and we have about eight weeks to get there. I'd tell you that this seems insurmountable, but truthfully, we've been here before. I've seen everything fall into place in ways I couldn't possibly have dreamed up. I'm trusting that though this is out of my hands, it is not out of His control. In the coming days, we will make preparations to add another son to our home, both with the addition of a new carseat and the purging of closets, but also space in our hearts for this new gift. The journey to him has already been long, complex, and difficult, but I have a feeling we're just getting started. The real journey is just beginning.