So Sad

Every corner of my heart hurts right now! I don't want to wait any longer, I don't want to be patient, I don't want to hear anyone else tell me it will happen, I just want it to happen. I don't want to be strong, I don't want to be brave, I just want to hold my little boy. I just want to bring him home, I just want to tell him everything is okay now because Mommy and Daddy have come, and his life will never be the same. We're stuck in a seemingly never ending dream in which we know what we are looking for and every time we have about found it, it vanishes again...just out of our reach, so close I can almost feel it and then poof...gone. I am overwhelmed with sadness, I am broken, and I'm not sure how this will ever find resolution. Every corner of my heart hurts right now!

Hard days and a little bloggy philosophy

In the world of international adoption you seem to live from one piece of information to the next, obviously "live" is too strong of a word, but for lack of a better word I'll use it. There are days you would take any kind of information...good or bad. But then, when the bad news comes you wish desperately that you didn't know after all. A side effect of little to know real information is you become an expert at reading between the lines. "What is my SW saying in the email or news letter that she is not actually, outright saying?" This is the most recent type of information we have received, the "reading between the lines" kind. Last Friday Liz, our wonderful SW, told me that she received an long over due email from our Thai SW. She had told Liz it was her intention to get some of the WACAP cases moving, or finished up...something like that. They had 3 days off for the Thai New Year and she would work over the holiday on our cases. There are 3 families that are basically at a year of waiting for their referrals, hopefully we were the three she was referring to. So having this "good" news last week brought some relief this week. Relief in knowing there would be no referrals because Asians are very slow and the mail can't run between the 2 countries quickly. So obviously my mind hopes for next week...or the next, maybe as late as mid-May when our agency travels to Thailand. The Thai SW seems to like to hold onto paperwork for weeks/months and then hand it over in person, even though our WACAP SW practically begs for her to go ahead and send anything that is ready...must be a cultural barrier. So we think in our limited minds "the end of May has to be the latest". So here comes last night's update, we get an update from our SW every Friday evening. At the request of the Thai SW our agency's trip to Thailand has been postponed until June 6th with the little addendum that she (the Thai SW) would like to have some WACAP cases ready by then. :( How sad for all of us. If I am reading between the lines correctly there's not much hope that any referrals will come next week or next month. Huge disappointment it seems that every time we feel that we are getting closer to the end of the wait for a referral the finish line moves! I feel very frustrated and hurt for Max who will be longer in the orphanage, you might be saying just a few weeks, but weeks seem to have a way of turning into months with this adoption. I feel frustrated and hurt for us. I feel angry with the Eastern world for feeling no sense of urgency in any area including getting little children to families who love them!!! Why the wait? How long has our paperwork just set on her desk waiting to be completed? Is it ready and now just sitting again? How long can a child history take for heaven's sake he's only 3 years old? I wrote out my life history in a matter of days and I'm 41! What the heck is going on with these people! But ultimately I understand that God is in control. He has a plan in all of this, a plan that will bring Him glory, I know He does and I do trust Him, but there are days that my faith is a bit shaken...just to be perfectly honest.

In light of my revelation that my faith is sometimes shaken, it's truly where I am but it causes me to also think about...blogging. As we blog we walk a very fine line between revealing too much of our personal struggles and thus not glorifying God with how He is working in our lives, (I happen to think questioning God is sinful as that seems to be when God chose to respond to Job!) and glossing over everything and giving the reader a false picture of who we are, or a false picture of our "heart" as some might say. In this very controlled, 1 dimensional medium it can be tempting to create a "false" self who never struggles and walks through the toughest of circumstances with an ever present song in the heart. It's also quite easy to say too much, having no accountability and therefore feeling the freedom to say things in a blog, you would not say to another person, or even to God for that matter, to be too bold in your complaining. Talking without looking anyone in the eye or even hearing a response on the other end of the phone carries a lot of responsibility.

So I am striving for balance as I share in this blog. My life isn't perfect, nor is my heart, but my life is not terrible either. It hurts more than I can say to wait so long for a little boy on the other side of the globe, and there are days I would rather quit than go on any more. But I also know that I am not doing this for myself. We are adopting because we feel completely called to adopt. God working everything out perfectly doesn't confirm His call nor do difficult waits and an imperfect process negate His call. There's nothing Polly Annaish about our life. My kids make mistakes, my husband is a sinner and likely I am the chief of all sinners in our home. My goal with this blog is to bring glory to God in my sinful, inadequate way. Sometimes my heart is breaking and sometimes it is rejoicing.

I guess I wanted to say all of that because blogging has become so huge in our culture, and I see it as a rather shallow form of self-revelation. "You may see of me exactly what I want you to see be it true or what I would like to be true, but the black in my soul shall never be revealed because I would like for it not to be there", not a very accurate picture of most of us. I hope that those who truly know me recognize the same person writing this blog as they share a church pew with or teach school with, or share a home with. I hope that I don't over sell or under sell myself. My goal is to share our adoption and a portion of our lives, with those who care to know, without pretense or fabrication.