hold fast

Today, at one point, Edson and I were cuddling in a chair and both crying. Not sure either of us could have actually told you why we were, other than the fact that we are just both tired. Tired of waiting. One night recently, Edson was lying in bed looking pensive (not his default), and I asked him what was going on. He sighed, and said he was sad for one of his "brothers", because he was going to have to wait so long to get a family. "I waited a long time for you to adopt me. I knew you would, but it took a long time." Sometimes I forget that those months when I was doing paperwork, waiting for the next piece of paper to be handed on, he was waiting too. And then I got visits, and we had to wait for him to come live with me. And then he came home, and we had to wait for finalisation. And then we got finalisation and we waited for the next thing, and the next, and the next. And now, Edson asks daily when we can go to Ireland, but we're here -...

I could go back and check the date, but I would guess that backpack was in my cupboard for about 18 months. I had one like it, and Edson loved it. He’d put it on, walk about, pull all my stuff out of it and put his stuff in. And so I decided he needed one of his own, for that day that seemed so far off, but that I think I always knew would happen - the day he came to live with me forever. I loved the beauty of it, the mirror image of it, that by buying one backpack, two kids would get the chance to have a bag all their own to move out of their home with. And so in there it stayed, even when mine broke - I powered through until I could get a replacement, because that one was his. There was something about it, almost sacred, holding space, all through the in-between. Some small show of faith that I truly believed it would happen - in God’s timing, not mine - but one day he would come home. One day the hoped-for would become the now-here. It sat there, through the mo...