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November 19, 2002

A beginning

I am not even sure if I want to say this, but can't keep it to myself.

This entry is going to be long but I am not going to put part of it after a "MORE" - I think I want it to take up the whole page.

Today, we were matched with a child.

Our adoption agency had said this referral was likely to happen once INS approved us, but still - now that it actually happened, I feel even more excited, and even more scared, than I expected.

It would not be right to say anything more than this now - the process has really just started. We will soon, God willing, be starting a long legal process in Guatemala. (The "God willing" isn't normal speak for me, but it just seems like it has to go in there).

There's a picture on the refrigerator now. We have actually had this picture for a little while, but until now it was a child, and the picture was in a folder, so we would not look at it too much. Now, it is not "our" child now, but the picture now speaks a lot more than a thousand words.

For so many years I've seen other people's refrigerators with pictures of other people's kids on them (for some reason my mother, who had pictures of me all over the house, never puts pictures on the fridge!).

This picture - of someone we know only a few paragraphs about, really - is somehow so much more real than all of those other pictures, even though I've met a lot of those kids, seen some of them grow up and have their own.

I have always measured myself by work, sometimes to a ridiculous degree. From time to time the real world put things in perspective - my father's death, illnesses of those close to me, and 9/11 - but I always manage to fall back into the old ruts and complaints.

Those complaints are still there, but from time to time I see that picture or think about what might happen to us and am jolted out of my old world.

This is not always pleasant (how can I do anything but bow down to the powers that be at work when I need to keep this job so badly now?). I am up, down, and sideways emotionally and my wife is too.

I need to end this entry but can't figure out how to ... but maybe that's because it is just a beginning.

Posted by markj at November 19, 2002 11:17 PM

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Comments

Posted by: jen at November 19, 2002 11:27 PM

Posted by: dave at November 20, 2002 01:49 AM

Posted by: erika at November 20, 2002 02:10 PM

Posted by: Linda at November 20, 2002 09:03 PM

Posted by: yvonne at November 21, 2002 01:13 AM

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