A year from now our home and family will look much different. Our kids will be all under one roof and Scott and I will have several months of parenting a teenager under our belts. We will have bought a total of five airline tickets crossing continents to unite our family. Four round trip and one one way.
The imagery of purchasing a one way ticket used to conjure up country song lyrics in my mind, or might have painted a picture of a wanderlust traveler journeying around the world. But now? Now I picture handing a one way ticket to the trembling hands of a girl and asking her to leave the only place she's ever called home. There's no safety net, no return date, and no instruction manual. We don't know what she will have to her name, very possibly nothing but the clothes on her back when she leaves her foster home for the last time. She is not a small child who will cry, tantrum, and sleep on the plane. She'll be very aware of the monumental transition that will take place in her life, and it's my delusional hope that she'll be more excited than terrified.
I hope that we can do small things to prepare her to take that step. The one that we've known about for almost a year now. The one I could not comprehend all at once. Yes, in a year from now she will have learned that we love her, and want to provide the best for her. But the first day....that first flight (maybe of her entire life) will take God's provision. I need Him for the big things. I pray for Him to support Rose in ways I won't know how to. To wrap his arms around her and comfort her if she doesn't want us to. To make a clear path before her so she won't be as afraid. Mostly, to prepare in her heart in that supernatural way He worked in ours for her to know that she was meant to be our daughter.
We still don't know most of Rose's story. I've accepted that it will take a long time to get to know her, and for her to get to know and trust us. But the thing that has kept me going up until this point is to do what I have to do for her to know about us. When we mailed our dossier, along with the largest check I've ever written in my life, it was in the hopes that she will soon be officially referred and match with Scott and I. And after all this work we've done will culminate into the one moment where a case worker speaks to Rose or her foster family, or however they'll relay to her...."You have a family. Here is a picture of them. They live in the United States. You have two younger brothers, and your Mom and Dad will be here in about a month so you can meet them."
When our daughter is "born" into our family we will be on separate timelines, in separate countries, but for the first time we'll each fall asleep that night with the knowledge of each other. We will be literally worlds apart, as our hearts unite us as family.
And my brave daughter, she'll have about a month or so to process what we've digested in 12 months. Before we show up and introduce ourselves, face to face for the first time. Fumble with language and figuring out the personal space that she'll want and how to shower her with the affection she deserves, customs, likes, dislikes, fears, joys, you name it. We have to appreciate that she has had to wait for over 3 years in a foster family, probably wondering if she'll ever be adopted. And from the time that she finds out about us until she's home with us will be a period of less than six months.
Yes, in a year from now our lives will be different. I hope I'm reminding Rose to pick her towels up off of the floor and asking her to trade one more Bulgarian word with me for an English one before she gets ready for bed. I am full of hopes for my daughter. But the biggest one right now is that when she learns about us, she will be filled with hopes too.
