Two Months Down...

It's so exciting to mark off one more month of waiting! If only we knew how much time was left...It seems as if we've been waiting a lot longer, but I suppose it's because we began our home study in May, which would actually make it ten months since we started the process. And, if you count the time since we started trying to have a family, that would be three years and five months. But who is counting? Certainly not us. :)


Waiting is good in many ways--as I mentioned in one of my very first posts, we've definitely learned and grown a lot during this time. We recently learned that the referral period has lengthened by a few months, which means that we get to learn and grow for even longer! We will also have more time to save money, learn Korean, educate ourselves on adoption, and complete all those other things we want to. Our logical minds are telling us these facts. But our hearts are telling us that we love this baby so much, and that this baby has been growing in our hearts for a long, long, time, even before we realized it. And because we love our baby so much, we want to know our baby! We want to find out if we have a Joel or a Naomi, see what he or she looks like, what makes he or she laugh and giggle, and most of all, we want to bring him or her home!


In the past few weeks, our infertility and miscarriages have really been on my heart. The wounds that I thought were healing well have been reopened. After some soul searching, I believe it's because exactly one year ago, we were going through our IVF and our most difficult miscarriage. In fact, it was February 29 when we found out very definitely that our baby was not going to make it. On March 5 I had a D&C. This time of year is bringing it all back, and I'm trying my best to look forward to our future and our adoption. At the same time, I don't want to push away my feelings, because they are important. I decided I needed to do something while we're waiting, something to keep our baby real. Getting our referral and bringing our child home sometimes seem so far away, almost unreal. I decided to write a series of letters to our child while we are waiting. It was a very powerful experience as I thought about our child someday reading what I was thinking and feeling while we were waiting. Here's an excerpt from the first letter...


"It is getting harder and harder to wait for you, baby. When we first finished our homestudy and sent all of our paperwork, it was such a huge milestone! We were so excited to be that much closer to having you home with us. And once our paperwork was sent to Korea, we wanted to throw a party! That was the final step in our process that we had any control over. It was just time to wait. Now, baby, as you’ll find out when you get a little older, your mama has very little patience. I didn’t think it would be easy to wait to know who you are, but I didn’t think it would be so difficult. Every day that goes by is an eternity in our wait for you..."


Both of us hope to write more letters and put them into a "Waiting" scrapbook for our child to look at when he or she gets older. As for now, we continue to pray for God to watch over our child and to give us the patience to wait gracefully.