Growing Pains

      -written Friday, March 16

As the outside is dreary and rain trickles slowly down my living room window, so do the tears today trickle slowly down my cheeks. For this I am so thankful! I just dropped off Nathanael at Kindergarten and Annalise to her pre-school and have a rare morning of no appointments so in this quiet morning, all the feelings stirring underneath are afforded the opportunity of release. When we started this process of adoption, I feared that I would not FEEL a deep attachment to these children. Today, possibly still many months from finally receiving N and A home, I miss them deeply. I cry over them as their mother and they may not yet even know that I exist. I can't even begin to grasp the dangers they are in and the loneliness and confusion they may feel. What have they seen and experienced? At the very least, they have lost both mother and father at the same time. How do children process such a thing? Especially without their mother and father to help them process it? I don't know but I DO know that God has answered my prayers in giving me love for them and I trust that He is answering our daily prayers that they feel His love and know His protection. When an earthly father can do nothing to protect his children, his prayers are a mighty tool in the hands of their heavenly Father. When an earthly mother can't scoop them up into her arms and cover them in kisses, her prayers surely beckon to them the presence of the Creator of mommies! How long will we have to wait? Today, it feels that the wait could be indefinite. 

     About 4-5 weeks ago we heard the good news that they are in fact HIV negative and we signed on the dotted line to accept their referral. We also learned that we could correspond with them via internet through our attorney and wrote them a letter trying to explain adoption and our love for them. Since then, silence and a stall in the process. (Chuck just came home and told me that our attorney in the Congo has been extremely ill and will hopefully be back to work in a couple weeks.) At that moment of accepting the referral I feel like life's longest umbilical chord was stretched from Princeton, NJ USA to a dusty and lava covered orphanage in Goma, North Kivu Province, Democratic Republic of Congo. They are at the foot of an active gigantic volcano that could erupt again at any time, on the edge of Lake Kivu which is filled with poisonous gasses, and surrounded by brutal, hellacious war and disease. Yet, I am saddened but not worried. Our heavenly Father loves us and these children more than we can begin to muster, and He has put it in our hearts to love and pursue them. He will see them home if this is in fact where He intends them to be. I feel the kicks and growing pains in my heart this time around rather than in my womb. In the same way that they were not always comfortable when I carried Nathanael and Annalise, they were then and are now a welcomed sign of life and love to come. As for all the other orphaned children ... I am growing uncomfortable with the fact that I don't yet feel the same love for them. I pray that God will fix that in my heart and in the hearts of all of us. Now, off to grab that illusive shower while I can!