Waiting is hard. Waiting with no control over anything and nothing you can do that will change the amount of waiting you have to endure is worse. Waiting for a deadline that seems to keep moving out farther and farther from where you are while you are waiting for it to arrive just really stinks. That's where you find yourself after you make it past court in your child's country of origin. They are yours, and there is nothing you can do to speed up the time between them being yours and the time you actually have everything put together to go and get them.
It makes it feel like a pregnancy that has no due date. You know that someone is joining your family. You know who they are. All you want to do is bring them home - but you can't. There always seems to be "just one more thing" you have to have. You have to turn paperwork in to the US government. Then you wait for them to review it. Then they decide to add an "investigation" into the process. And you wait again. Then the country you are adopting from, in an effort to limit child trafficking, stops allowing legally adopted kids to leave the country. And you wait again. You end up waiting for the next thing to delay you rather than focusing on bringing your child home.
You lose patience and go to visit your children. You see them, you hug them, you hold them, you play with them, and it feels good. And then you have to leave. There really isn't anything like leaving your child in a place you know is not the best place for them, not knowing when you will get to go back to them. It tears at you when you have to do it and every day after that. You know all to well what it felt like to have them, and now you can't again. It makes waiting hard. It makes staying positive hard. It makes you irritable because you want to fight someone to bring them home and there is no one to fight.
After all this, you might be asking "Why?" Come back tomorrow for the answer.
Good reading, Mike. Helps people understand what you are going through.
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