All You Need is Love

My Sweet Daughter,

I cannot believe this is my third year of writing you a letter on Valentine's Day.  3 years!!  Although (because of procedural obstacles such as finishing paperwork) we’ve only “officially” been waiting a little over a year and a half now, it’s an eternity-the time of 2 pregnancies.  But in other ways, it feels like we started the process yesterday.  I still remember the butterflies of sending our application to the Ethiopia program, of completing our home study with the social worker, of finally mailing our dossier to Ethiopia.  These steps will make everything “real” in the government’s eyes.  They are proof that someday you will be ours.

Us mailing the dossier-A big day!!

The biggest news of the past year is that Daddy and I decided you could be a little bit older when we adopted you.  We used to think you would be younger than a year when we met you, but now we’ve determined (and told our agency) that you can be as old as 2 before coming home.  Making this change was hard and scary since we want you to be with us as soon as possible after you are born.  However, we know that YOU aren’t in control of why or how or when you end up in an orphanage.  We agonized and prayed over this choice.  As YOUR parents and biggest advocates, it feels strange and wrong to be in control of these decisions-especially when everything was predetermined with your brother.  But we felt peace about moving forward with this change, about not hindering our family becoming whole simply because you might be a few months older than we initially thought.  I hope this doesn’t make you feel weird.  We are ALL getting older, sweetie, most days I feel about as spry as a 90 year old grandma.  

What hurts most about this change is the chunk of life we’ll spend apart from each other.  Up to 2 years.  Based on our agency’s fluctuating timeline, we guess that we’ll be waiting (at least) 2 years longer to meet you.  Which means you could be born THIS YEAR.  Right now many of our friends are pregnant and having babies and I can’t help but thinking of you.  Of memories we are missing, baby pictures I’ll never get to take.  I worry that someday you will be mad at us because of this lost time, the reminiscence we desperately want to share but can’t.  It kills me.

Regarding this, I want to tell you about a conversation I had with your brother just last week.  Because he LOVES all things math related (It’s okay if you don’t, it was always my least favorite subject too), we were talking about numbers and dates:

Elijah: How about 7/21/07 (his birthday)?

Me (jokingly): Oh no, don’t remind me-that was the worst day of my life!

Elijah: I bet it did hurt…(after a beat of silence)...Was it worth it?

Me: Of course, Buddy.  It is worth it every day.

That, my dear daughter, is the truth.  Labor pains last for hours, maybe a day, and then they are over.  But we’ve been growing you in our hearts for nearly 5 years.  I can’t say it is the same as physical pain, although some days are unbearable.  Being separated from you feels like being ripped apart, like we are only half here.  I see an empty space in our family pictures, an absence in every holiday.  The waiting, the paperwork, the hoops we have to jump through to eventually bring you home are disconcerting.  This process seems never-ending.  It is stupid (don’t tell your brother I said that) to need to legally and officially establish what we know is true.  You are already ours.  You are a cherished and loved member of this family.  And yes, this part hurts like hell.  But you are worth it, darling.  Every day you are worth it.

Love,

Daddy, Mama, and Elijah