It is a popular ride, so there is usually a line to wait in. As you wait you watch other people ahead of you get on with nervous faces and off with big smiles (or sometimes looking a little green). You watch the people with Flash passes get in line after you and finish long before you.
Finally it is your turn.
You walk into a fenced off area and have a seat on one side of a 20 story tower. After everyone is secure you are taken to the top fairly quickly. But once you get to the top, they don't drop you right away. As they rotate you slowly around the tower, they sing a silly song over the intercom. Something like...
"Ring around the rosie,
Pocket full of posies..."
And at some point during the song your seat tips forward so you are looking at the ground, 20 stories below...all the people waiting in line looking like tiny little ants...
"Ashes, Ashes,
We all fall..."
And you think maybe they will sing the whole song before the free fall starts, but they surprise you just before the end...
"down."
And then the adrenaline hits you as you plummet toward the concrete below--only to stop before actually becoming a pancake on the ground.
For three years and 8 months we have been waiting. Waiting for so many things. Waiting for initial approvals with an agency, waiting for clearances to come back, waiting for fingerprint appointments, home study interviews, doctors appointments, birth certificates, marriage license, translations...
And then it all crashed down around us and we started again from scratch. And the waiting began again. Fingerprints. Doctor Appointments. Background checks. Home Study Interviews. Translations, translations, translations.
Waiting, waiting, waiting. Always waiting. And watching as other people began adoptions after us and completed before us. And so.many.babies. Everywhere I look people are having babies.
And they would get off the ride with smiles or maybe looking a little green. But they were out of the line! Oh how I struggled with bitterness. Questioned the Lord. "Why didn't you give ME a flash pass?! Why couldn't I have ONE more kid BEFORE we started this insanity?! THREE years?! How Long, Oh Lord!?"
And you've followed along. You know how gently God has reminded me to wait for Him. To take heart and wait.
But, Friends, can I tell you something? With our dossier approved, we are strapped in to the ride and we have been taken to the top! From where I sit I feel like I can see the world. And I look around me and realize that so many of you are strapped in with me. You have been waiting beside us and behind us, holding us up with your prayers. We are all sitting here, listening to the ride controller singing his silly song.
"Round and round and round we go,
Where we stop..."
So many of you are holding your breath with us, waiting for the moment when we tip forward to look at the ground.
Waiting for the moment when the controller hits the button and the adrenaline surge begins.
I was talking to Kyle today about how very different I feel about the waiting we are doing now. For almost 4 years it has been a wait full of dread. "What will go wrong next?" But now we wait with glorious anticipation. It could still be a long wait. It could. But just knowing that we are up at the top...
Usually at Christmastime I look at our fourth stocking and just feel sadness. There is definitely a piece of our puzzle that is missing. We thought 2015 would be the year. We truly did. And I look at that stocking and I look at how I have reacted so often in this journey, and I'm surprised to find that I'm not sad. The ache is there--the missing. The wishing. It's all still there, but the thing I feel most this Christmas is HOPE. I look forward to the future with such hope. Such anticipation. And while there is a small voice that tells me to stuff that hope down, to not embrace it because if something else goes wrong, it will hurt more if there is hope...I'm doing my best to ignore that voice. I choose to look toward 2016 with hope. With anticipation of the free fall that will change our lives drastically.
Today is December 21st. 4 days until Christmas, 3 days until we end our fundraiser. As of this moment we have 25 ornaments remaining. 75 have been purchased and are hanging on Christmas trees from Colorado to Alabama and Florida to Virginia...Family, neighbor friends, church friends, work friends, college friends, long lost friends, complete strangers, middle schoolers and adults.
I interrupt this blog post to say **Make that 24 remaining--one more was just claimed!**
So many people have contributed to this fundraiser and we are so incredibly thankful. I'll probably drive you a bit crazy on Facebook for the next couple of days as I update the fundraiser, but then I promise to back off for a while! ;) Here is an updated chart of the ornaments still remaining...
