The Waiting Game

The Weight of the Waiting

This is one very overdue blog post.  I’ve tried to write it several times but the timing wasn’t right.  Truth be told, I’m not sure it is now either, but I need to write for my own sanity, so here goes my best shot.

Today is the third day of February, 2015.  It seems like forever ago that we started this blog, and even longer since we accepted the call to take a faith journey into adoption.  So much has changed, and so much remains the same.  And I’m afraid that will be how it is for the foreseeable future as we have completed the paper chase and we are now joining many others ahead of us in the very long cycle of waiting.  Painful, dreadful, awful waiting.   

The heaviness of the wait is sometimes more than we can bear, and yet, it’s unbelievable that we’ve already come this far and that this much time has passed.

When I told my friend “Auntie Joy“  that we were adopting, she said she wasn’t particularly surprised to hear it, and then she described adoption as a pregnancy of the heart.  She said it would come with its own unique set of challenges and pain, and that she hoped it would pass by quickly. 

If that’s what this is, I am in the nesting faze, and I’m sometimes not sure I will ever get out of it!!

We knew late last summer that there were some practical decisions that needed to be made in the window of time we have before we bring our baby home.  At the time, I was willing to acknowledge three of them, things I knew needed to change or be settled in order to make our transition as seamless as possible.  The last thing we want to do is bring home a child who has suffered grief, loss, and trauma, and add to it by compounding it with more sudden changes than necessary.  Coming to a new house in a new town, in a state she’s never heard of, in a country that is not even on her same continent seems like enough!  Add to that some rambunctious brothers, a different language, a host of people who want to meet her, who look nothing like her, new foods, and a new climate….well, you get the picture.  We will be asking her to adjust to a lot of things all at once.  We want her to come home, feel at ease and comfortable, but we know that adoption isn’t romantic, that a piece of paper declaring her our daughter won’t mean a thing to her, and that those transitional weeks and months in the beginning will be hard…on all of us.  We’re willing to accept the challenge; she may or may not be.

So back to my point, we’re trying to settle the big things we can foresee with our limited view of life as we know it, to at least ease the transitions she’ll have to face.

The three things on my list were career, childcare, and home.  Quite simply, we have three boys in a three-bedroom house that used to seem huge (prior to the children) and now seems loud and overrun with these littles who are no longer so little!  Dare we stack three boys into one bedroom so that their sister can have her own room?  The State won’t allow her to share a room with a brother for long, so something has to give!  Do we convert our partially finished basement into a bedroom, add an egress window, a closet, and baseboard heating; change over the loft; or flat-out move?  The answer isn’t obvious, and while we’ve been praying on it and trying to take steps toward solving the riddle, we still don’t know what we’re going to do. 

The childcare issue seems to be under control.  We have found a suitable sitter for the boys, a family friend in our neighborhood who we believe will be able to assist with nurturing a child with fear and anxiety issues while Steve and I are at work.

Work is  the third area of concern.  The first-worlder in me knows it would be a lot easier to manage the financial commitment of raising four kids of one or both of us made more money.  At the same time, we don’t want to forfeit too much of our time and energy to our jobs, knowing what is at home is much more important.  So we are praying for wisdom and seeking heavenly guidance as we consider potential opportunities.  As I write this, we are waiting to hear results from an interview Steve had three weeks ago which could cause a number of our decisions to fall into place, but we don’t know, so we wait.

On top of that, my Seeing Eye dog, Aussie, had to retire very suddenly in September.  I had not planned for that to happen for another four years.  He developed a neurological problem which has essentially caused his brain to stop sending signals to his back right leg, which has withered away to nothing.  If the condition moves into the left leg, he’ll lose the ability to walk, and it appears that may be slowly happening.  So add to our agonizing waiting the pain of watching him decline, and anticipating the acquisition of his successor….eventually.  Oh, and we got a puppy!  Just for kicks, because we needed more chaos!  So now our three-bedroom house with three kids has the potential to become a three-bedroom house with four kids and three big dogs.  Seriously, you do not need to tell us we’re out of our minds, we already know!

Our dossier has just come back from translation at America World and will now be prepared to be authenticated by the consulate.  We also are waiting for approval from our own government to adopt internationally, and there is a separate set of paperwork that goes along with that.  Eventually, all of this paperwork will make it to Haiti, but there is currently a policy in place allowing the submission of one dossier per agency per month and we must wait our turn in line.  After that, the wait is expected to be eight or nine months for a referral, followed by a two-week bonding trip to Haiti, and then a return home for another six-eight months, and at last a trip to bring the smallest Shelton to US soil for good.

And now you have a glimpse into the heaviness that is the waiting we are enduring. While we have much to live for at present, the waiting tugs at our hearts and slowly rubs us raw with discouragement.  I can’t fully describe it other than to say it just stinks.  And it’s hard.  On all of us.  If it seems long to me, imagine how long it seems to the kids who have lived a very large portion of their lives knowing we’re going to adopt, and watching others bring their children home, with no more concrete information about their own sister.  Some things are just hard to explain to ourselves, let alone to the boys.

So what do we do while we wait?  I can’t say I’ve mastered patience and that I’m never frustrated or anxious.  What I do know is that we trust in a God who is faithful, and that we know his timing is perfect and all of this will make sense in the end.    

I also know that this time of waiting goes by much faster when we make it a time of service.  The more we give, and focus outwardly on others, the less we feel the pull of self-pity.  This time is also proving to be a time of both refining and creating.  We have discovered talents within ourselves we didn’t know we had, or had long forgotten, as we open ourselves up to give, to serve, to be in community, and to share.  We are seriously not the same people we were when God called us nearly three years ago!

One other thing that helps is spending as much time as we can in community with those who truly care about us.  When we began our journey, we thought we knew who our supporters would be.  Little did we know, some of our most encouraging and faithful supporters were people we hadn’t even met yet!  So to those of you who have hung in there with us, who have pep talked us, and cried with us, who have let us vent, and who have cheered us on, thank you.

Thank you to everyone who has given to us in any capacity.  Your generous support has meant more to us than you could ever know.  Thank you for every candy bar purchase, for every rummage sale donation, for every “keep the change,” every gift on-line or in person, for your calls, and emails, prayers, and event participation.  Thank you for loving us and our kids, and for walking alongside us on this very, very long road.  We love you all.  We can’t wait to find out how this story ends….along with you…and to write the victory post at the end of the waiting….you know, when we bring home a baby and the real work begins!

“Do you not know?  Have you not heard?  The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.  He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.  He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.  Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;  but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and will not be faint”  Isaiah 40:28-31

“Give thanks to the Lord.  His love endures forever.”