The past few years, different emotions have come up each time March 4 rolls around. There are a few days of my life that I can relive vividly in my mind – every detail of them – and March 4, 2009, three years ago today, is one of them. Life fell apart at 10:30 in the morning, and I couldn’t pick up the pieces for the longest time.
Time (and therapy) heals broken hearts, and we were in a better place March 4, 2010 to mark our first year of waiting. We were (mistakenly) under the impression that our dossier could be released for matching at that point. We were at least halfway to the finish line! Look at us! We had dinner out and bought some books for our little one to celebrate how far we had come in a year.
March 4, 2011 was a more reflective time. The wait was getting hard, but it was supposed to end any time now. It was a time to look back at what I’d learned through this wait, and to look expectantly to the hopefully not-so-distant future.
Today, we mark three years since we were hit with the double-edged sword of being told that yes, we could adopt one child from the Philippines, but no, we could not adopt the two children we had been falling in love with for the past six months. 2012 is different from 2010 and 2011. This year, ICAB has been looking for more information about us. They have been asking questions that are so reminiscent of questions we answered in the days leading up to March 4, 2009. This week has been a heart-stopping week full of fear, sadness, trepidation, and eerie déjà vu.
At a time when I should be so close to finding joy and reaching the end of this unbearably long wait, it’s tough to be slapped in the face with cold reminders of the past. It makes it very easy to feel that this journey will not end simply because of who we are on paper. To that end, I have to question one thing – if we were such horrible people, would we have held on for so long for something so precious as a human life? Today I anticipate, hope, and pray with everything I have left.
