Six Months

This week marks six months since we first made it to the wait list.  Six months of waiting.  Some days it feels as if I have felt every single second of that six months.  Other days, it seems nearly impossible to me that it has really been six months.  I suppose that is the nature of waiting.

If I look at the big picture, the average amount of time people spend on the wait list, or the amount of time I expect that we will be on the wait list, we are still at the relatively early stage of waiting.  Some days that is a comfort and some days that makes me want to tear my own hair out.  To know that others have gone much longer than six months and have ended up with pure happiness in the end is comforting.  To know that this waiting could continue for much much longer is the thought that leads to the desire to pull my own hair out.  But I accept both emotions and both thoughts.  I know that this is where we are supposed to be and I know that what will unfold from here is what is supposed to happen.

I found the following quote recently: " I have learned that faith means trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse."  It seems to fit my current mindset so perfectly.  I have never really understood faith before.  You would think that being the daughter of a rabbi would give me some sort of birth right to faith. That growing up in a household filled with faith would rub off on me and fill me with a true understanding of faith from an early age.  But it didn't.  Truly, I never understood what people meant by having faith.  It was not something I had and it was not something that I understood.  But now, I get it.  My faith does not come in a religious way (sorry Dad :) ). The faith that I have developed is simply a way of knowing.  I know that things will work out and I know that one day when I look back on this long journey, all of these things that are happening will make sense.  Only in hindsight might I understand why it all happened, but I believe that one day it will make sense.  I know that one day we will find our child and our child will find us and it will happen exactly the way that it is supposed to happen.  That is what faith feels like to me.

In the mean time, I will choose to follow the advice of my oh-so-wise grandfather.  Carla and I just spent two splendid days with my 91 year-old grandfather in Florida.  He has seen so much.  He knows so much and I so respect him for his knowledge and wisdom.  While we were visiting, he looked at both Carla and I and told us to be patient.  He told us not to try to force things.  Things that are forced, he said, never end up working.  He is right.  We will not try to make a situation right.  We will allow the right situation to find us.  It might feel painful as we wait, but the wait will be worth it in the end because it will bring us the very right situation for all involved.  Thank you, Papa, for being so smart.

So here's to six months of waiting and here's to however many more months of waiting it takes to find our family of three.