My Heart

Thank you so much to everybody for your encouraging words through the blog, facebook, texts, and phone calls. It really means a lot to me. Thank you.

But, you know that through out this journey this blog has been real and honest and raw. It is my chance to share with our friends, other adoptive parents (many who I now also count as friends), and also to record this journey for myself, and someday for Allison to know just how loved she was before she even came home.

So this is a sample conversation from yesterday, and it's translation:

You: Oh, I'm so sorry to hear about the delay. How are you doing?
Me: Oh, I'm fine.

but what I mean is....

Me: I had my heart ripped from me 6 weeks ago. I met my daughter and then had to leave her. All that I had to hold on to was a date of when we would get to hold her again and bring her home. But now they have even taken that date away from me. I know that in the big picture two additional weeks of waiting isn't that long, but I was just told to wait 22 days to have my heart put back in place when I was counting down already and had gotten all the way down to 8!
Today is one month until we will be a family of 5. But what really stinks is that I already passed and celebrated the one month mark 2 weeks ago.

So I try to be strong. Partly because that's how I want to feel, partly because I don't want to blow you away when you ask a simple question, and partly because to put these feelings into words brings on the tears, and I have better things to do than redo my make-up 50 times a day. (Though I don't know if anything will completely stop the tears from coming in the coming days -- and fair waring, they've been coming randomly, without warning. Just ask Tony.)

I know in my head that this is a minor setback. I know that it is still relatively soon that she will be home. But that's 14 more days that her crib is empty and her room is silent. 14 more days that our home will not be filled with a baby's laughter and even cries. 14 more days that her high chair sits unused at our dining room table.

I am a planner, so everything was planned right up until the minute we were to take off on September 24th. Now, there isn't much left to do, but wait.

I know that life is not a smooth journey, and that adoption has bumps along the road, but for the past 23 hours, I feel like I've been derailed.
Each morning she is the first thing I think of when I wake up, and I mentally check off how many days are left. Well, even this morning I did that, but I thought, "Today is Friday, one week until we leave! Oh, three weeks until we leave."

So I wait, and I pray, and I am still so very glad that you ask how we're doing, and still say that you're so sorry and that two weeks will go by quickly, but here is how I'm really doing because it's much safer to share this on the blog. Thanks for reading.