Time moves Slowly

The ministry is expected to start processing EP permits again this coming week. I am cautiously optimistic because movement was expected several times already and the process remained still. We also learned last week that James is definitely not going to be in the first few batches. The agency in Korea is expediting some of the children with special needs or whose adoptive parents need special waivers that will be eliminated when all the new laws go into place in August of this year. While I understand why the decision was made to do this, it does not make it easier.

So what does this mean for our family?

It means that if the ministry moves quickly, if they allow for large batches of children to be submitted for EP, if they allow for multiple submissions and approve them quickly then maybe, just maybe, James will come to his forever home in late spring..... and if the process doesn't move quickly, and things continue to hit standstill after standstill then we really don't know when our sweet boy will join us. 

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. We never imagined the process would change so much. What was supposed to be a 4-6 month wait after referral  is quickly approaching the one year mark.

I remember the day that Zoey was born like yesterday. I remember the room being filled with doctors and specialists and all of a sudden Zoey entered the world and the room was silent. She didn't cry right away and that brief moment in time felt like an eternity. Then as we heard the faintest cry ,they held my little premature baby up for me to see, and before I could even memorize her sweet face they whisked her away to the NICU. The medical staff finally finished and left the room and without a second thought I had to get to my baby. My cousin helped me to the bathroom because the epidural still had not worn off and I had very little feeling in my legs. Her and my husband helped me change and get cleaned up and within fifteen minutes after becoming a mother I was ready to go and see my daughter. Then the nurse came in, shocked to see me out of bed, and told me that is was hospital policy that we would have to wait another hour before I would be able to go see her.

I can still remember the humming of the clock as the second hand moved so slowly minute after minute. She wasn't even an hour old and I loved her so much already. The hour seemed like forever....probably at that point the longest hour of my life.

When we first started this adoption journey I knew that I would love my adoptive child just as much as Zoey.

What I didn't know is that from the moment I first saw his sweet face I would love him that much.

Some days, especially when we get news that the wait is getting longer, I feel like I am back in that hospital room listening to the hum of the clock and time is not moving. Lately, every day feels like that.... time is moving so slow and we are waiting hour by hour to know that something in Korea has changed and we will get to hold our boy in our arms soon.

And while we wait, we are watching him grow, and he has grown so much in the last 10 months. Receiving new pictures has become bittersweet because we want to see how he has changed but at the same time we are reminded of just how much time has passed and how we will never get those moments back. Yes, we will have new moments, and we will see other milestones, but we will never get the moments we missed back.

Sometimes when I think about just how the wait has changed I am sad, and mad, and angry all at once. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. We were supposed to hold our sweet boy months ago. He was supposed to be home already. Instead, we get to run this marathon, and every time we are about to get close to the finish line they move it another hundred miles. Well, this journey has me tired and weak, and I am losing my strength day by day. It is so hard to make sense of  it  because it seems so simple... James has a family so let him come home to it.

We are thankful for all the prayers, thoughts, and wishes. They mean so very much.

And hopefully soon we will have some good news to share.

"Not flesh of my flesh, Nor bone of my bone, But still miraculously my own. Never forget for a single minute, You didn't grow under my heart - but in it"