This is the hardest part of our journey to you so far, by far.
Every piece of our paperwork has been reviewed, scrutinized, and approved by all necessary government and adoption agencies. Now it's all at the China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption, just waiting for the elusive Travel Approval. Basically we're waiting for someone to just look at the whole package and put one more final stamp of approval on it.
It's so maddening to be at such an in between state. I haven't struggled with many other parts of the process, and in fact have defended them. If China needs to know all about our medical histories, our family home, our personal histories, our work histories, our housing histories - I don't care. They can have all the information they want. They want us to have the state government certify all of this information and the federal government authenticate the state certification? No problem! I'll spend all kinds of money to collect the documents and send them all over the country before sending them to China.
But when they have everything they need and everything has been approved and everyone has seen everything about us that they could possibly need to see, I can't for the life of me understand what is taking so long. Maybe they don't understand that every day they don't give us Travel Approval is yet another day that we don't have you. Another day of being in between.
We are in between being a family of four and being a family of five.
We are in between being here and there, as our bodies are here but our hearts are already there with you.
We are in between creating a family and being a family.
We are in between knowing about you and knowing you.
Daddy forwarded me a link a few months ago about what it's like to be a parent waiting for their child to come home. I have to tell you that I didn't relate to it at the time; I think that you were still too abstract to me when he sent it.
Now that we're so close to being together, I relate to every. single. word.
I'm going to post the link here so that anyone who is following our journey to you can understand what Daddy and I are experiencing as we wait. I also hope that I can look it up for years to come, and remember how eloquently someone else captured how we feel as we anticipate finally having you home forever.
It's so hard, but we know that you are so worth the wait.
Love,
Mommy and Daddy
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