4,595 Miles Away

This will just be a ramble. I am sitting at my table in my new dining room built to expand our family, reading the 90 pages of handbook emailed to me today for our home study. While sipping tea and munching toast with jam I look out on the back yard where 3 boys and my hubby played while me and Masha laughed hysterically at them. I think about those blue sneakers that should be at the door next to me. I think about how much fun we had killing 3 hours in the mall one day. I think about the day I drove half way to the hospital and back home to tea and soccer on the couch. About the subway station where I think he finally understood I don't just say I love him. About the long talks and prayer and scripture reading and waiting before we asked this boy to be our family... and I'm just missing it all.

It seems unfair that I'm the one that gets to sip my tea and eat my toast and remember fondly. The little boys get to talk about how they are practicing soccer and impatiently ask when he's coming home. Dad gets to come home from his hard days at work to the remote and xbox, thinking about the son who likes to volley (sometimes successfully, others not) to choose what to watch. We are cozy and life is familiar and we get to only miss.

But 4,595 miles away, there is a kid. Messaging me goodnight's and да's and snippets of information I ask of him. The boy that doesn't communicate with his words is left to only them with a language barrier. Will his uncovered heart stay open or will it cover itself up with that warm blanket of coping because 6, 7, 8 months is just too long for the rejected to hope that this time it's true. Will I translate something wrong and miss a sad face on the other side of the screen. Will he need this so much in almost a year since he first arrived... My heart knows he will, my head thinks too much.

Right down the street there is a kid just like this. Pick a country, that kid will be there. All over the world, tens of millions of them. Waiting for Hope to come. Not believing it ever will. And all over the world there are parents willing to adopt, but it's crazy expensive and every turn there is someone discouraging you, and another.

I say this not for myself, but just as myself. Support those you know hurting. Befriend a kid that needs it. Support those families volunteering, or fostering, or trying to adopt.

But most of all pray for these kids. Vlad isn't a "lucky one" that gets a family. He deserves us, we owe him that love, every child deserves family. Pray.