On the Eve of Matching Approval

About a month has gone by and we haven't made any tangible progress, although (I'm hoping) there's someone going through our dossier line by line and preparing our Matching Approval in Hong Kong as I type this. We were hoping Matching Approval would arrive the last week of September or the first week of October. Here we are, October 19th, and still we wait. I've said it before, waiting is HARD. We've been doing plenty to keep ourselves preoccupied, though. Like selling our house. Oh yeah, WE'RE SELLING OUR HOUSE. Sooo many questions have stemmed from that statement, so I'll briefly explain.

It's possible when our little guy comes home that he will need expensive surgery, dental work, glasses, hearing aides, therapies, etc.. Although we could make our money stretch to cover the costs, it just makes so much more sense to us to prepare ourselves financially for that before he comes home. We looked for ways to decrease our monthly expenses, and downsizing our mortgage is the quickest, and possibly the biggest way we can save money every month. I (Michelle) would also like to stay home completely some day (sooner, rather than later), so the choice was pretty easy for us. All of that combined was enough for us to do a marathon paint job and get this baby on the market. So, if you're looking for a 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom house with a 3 car garage and a whole lotta awesomeness, BUY OUR HOUSE!

http://www.weigand.idxco.com/idx/3929/details.php?idxID=075&listingID=373595

As far as the emotional state of the Embry household lately, it's been less than rosy. The excitement of "brother" coming home has worn off for Claire, and she's ready for us to come through on our promise of a new big brother. Telling her we're waiting on paperwork to be completed makes as much sense to her as when I try and explain why she can't have a gallon of pop every day. "I know you said no, mom, but I'm telling you I WANT pop right now". Yeah, sorry sister. Some things are just out of your control. And Matching Approval? Article 5? Out of our control. Completely. 

Derek and I have been trying to keep ourselves busy to take our minds off of something we can't change, but at the end of the day the disappointment remains. I know, I know, I know that this waiting will someday seem like a distant memory and I'll maybe even think "it really wasn't too bad", but I want to redirect my future self to this exact paragraph so I can remember what it does to a momma's heart. It feels almost like grieving. In fact, it feels pretty close to those five stages of grieving I learned about in college. Let's take a look at what adoption waiting/grieving looks like from a psychologists, err.. adoptive mom's point of view. 

1. Denial- "The wait won't be so bad, and besides, it'll give us more time to come up with $25,000". Sorry past self, you can only fundraise so long before you get sick of the child you've prayed for not appearing at the end of that garage sale rainbow. 

2. Anger- The reality of the waiting has set in and everything is annoying. Even if it's really not annoying, it's annoying. You feel like you've done so much hard work and then... NOTHING. No updates, no requests from your agency, no busy work to do.. nothing. Just silence. And waiting. And anger. 

3. Bargaining- Then comes the day you break the silence to your agency. You'd done so well not sending nagging emails asking, "Have you heard anything yet?", but you break. You send one on Tuesday. And then Thursday. And heaven forbid if there is not an update Monday morning by 10 o'clock, you are sending another. Please, can you just see what the hold up is? Have we maybe forgotten something and they're waiting on us? This waiting just can't be normal.

 Except it is.

4. Depression- Once you realize that sending a thousand emails isn't going to change anything, it hits you like a ton of bricks. The only thing that keeps you going is knowing that somewhere on the other side of the world, there's a little boy who has never known what it was like to have his mom and dad miss him every single day. And you can't wait to tell him how much you love him and that you've waited 26 long years to be his mom, even though he's only six years old. 

5. Acceptance- Finally you realize that even if it takes two years, it's still going to happen. And you're closer today than you were yesterday. And the number of days until you hold your son in your arms isn't getting bigger, only smaller. You may want to cry, or yell, or occasionally throw things when no one is around, but it's not going to bring your son home. So you pull yourself together, remember why you are doing this, and acknowledge it is MUCH harder to go six years without a family than it is to wait a year for a son. Because it's not about you, it's about him. It always has been. And that's when it feels like things might be okay.