Waiting

I just found this article about Waiting on a blog originally from the Joint Council website. When I was done reading it, I could only say Wow!It provides a glimpse to what it means and what is like to be waiting for a child through International Adoption:

We spend our lives waiting: to get our driver’s license, to finish school, for all the adult pleasures we’ve anticipated. But few of those times require the patience needed to wait for our children when we are in the midst of an international adoption. Once the rush stage is done and all the paperwork has been submitted and sent to our child’s country, the true wait begins — and it is one that makes us weak and strong at the same time.
The weakness comes from feelings of uncertainty (Will it really happen?); of lack of control (especially difficult for those of us who usually cope by taking charge); of insecurity (Will we make good parents? Will our children love us?). The strength comes from learning to trust ourselves and others (our agency and authorities in our child’s country); learning to have faith that something so abstract now will be concrete soon (holding our children); learning all we can during this time (from books, friends, family, and our own instincts).

In essence, this time of waiting for our children is a combination of fear and happy anticipation, mixed with ingredients of patience, faith, trust in people we don’t know, some sorrow and possibly anger about delays or changes here and abroad over which we have no control, and a large portion of hope. For there are two certainties in international adoption — the first being that eventually we will have our children (not necessarily in the time frame that we planned on), and the second being that in the meantime there will be delays, possible difficulties, and much less information and control than we would like. If we weather the frustrations, retain our hope, and refuse to give up , there is no way that we’ll fail to be united with our child.