Backpacks, the hoped-for, the in-between and the now-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 months without him. In the cupboard, while I wondered how he was, where he was.

It moved house, when that chapter closed, and I moved back to the city, admitting the end of my time at that big yellow house at KM11.

It remained as another school year started, another backpack bought and filled and off to school with him.

And when we were reunited, he noticed mine, similar to the one from before, but not the same. Maybe I was too? I told him I had one for him, I would bring it to him when the judge said it was time.

And I did, that morning with the judge, when the hoped-for became the now-here. He had his, I had mine. A slightly odd mother-son matching backpack situation. His tias, the ones who had cared for him, loved him in the in-between, they commented on it. They loved it. He loved it. I loved it.

And still now, we get them mixed up and I wonder why I thought to pack an ambulance and a rubix cube and he wonders about the phone charger and gets excited about that bottle of coke that is definitely not his.

He’s taken it everywhere for 4 months now. But this morning, he pulled out the one from the in-between. Another backpack, another story, another time filled with blanks he’s filling in for me, one story at a time.

And I grabbed his, instead of mine. Filled it with paperwork and off we went.

And so today, the two go together. As they do every day, as we work through our feelings. And the hurt and confusion of the in-between, and the fulfilment of the hoped-for and now-here combine.

And maybe we’ll get a glimpse of a greater fulfilment that is coming, of the hoped-for that soon might be the now-here. Of a Saviour who uses the pain, and frustration of the in-between to prepare us, ready us for the now-here that we’re waiting for. When He comes back, and all things are made new, and pain is a thing of the past.