We Wait

Isaiah 43:5 “I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west.”

John 14:18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”

I have two children.

After we gave up the dream of having a second child a few years ago, I never thought we'd be so blessed.

After all, we have one great kid already. That's so much more than other people can say, and much more than we deserve. She has my personality, my aunt's eyes, and Kevin's dimpled chin. A perfect representation of our blended lives, possessing our strengths and our flaws. She sleeps peacefully amid a pile of stuffed animals in her own bedroom, wrapped in the love of her family and loving Heavenly Father.

Our son sleeps in a room lined with metal cribs filled with hundreds of other abandoned children, half a world away. He has a few caretakers, but they are often busy with the other kids. He owns no toys, and likely has never been rocked to sleep. All alone in a city of millions, he sleeps while we go about our day. Soon, we hope, he will be moved into a smaller family unit environment in preparation to come home. For now, though, he has no idea we are on our way, much less what a family is like. I trust that Jesus is with him, just as He is with us, comforting him as he waits for his life to begin.

Michael's identity will be a complex and evolving web, but God will walk us through. It's hard to explain God's call to someone who's never heard or felt it, but He's asked us to walk this path, so we obey with trusting and glad hearts. Will Michael look in the mirror and see the country who rejected him, or the family that prayed for a son, this son? Will he resent his birth mother, or the family that took him out of China? Who will he be when we bring him home, and what kind of child and eventually man, will he be? We will wait for the answers.

We know so little about this child. What makes him laugh? Can he walk yet? What does he eat? Has he had a corrective procedure on his mouth yet? Is he getting the nutrition he needs to grow? We don't know, and we wait for news.

Today we find ourselves still waiting, not for knowledge of our child but for the approvals to make the journey to China. An document arrived yesterday, and now we are waiting for another letter from China before we can send off the next round of paperwork for his immigration and citizenship. So for now I obsessively check my phone and emails, waiting for the blessed message that the document has arrived at the adoption agency. For now I will stop circling the mailbox, waiting for the mailman to get out of my way! Every day is one long, painful step closer to the day God places my son in my arms.

So for now, we wait.