Drowning

When I woke up this morning, I turned off the alarm and saw that Mark had already left for church since he has to sing at all three services. I got all dressed in my red, white and blue and left for the 9:30 service. It wasn't until I pulled into the Glad Tidings parking lot and noticed that there were no cars there that I realized today was Saturday! Mark was at work. And right there, I just turned off the van and sobbed. The "waves" during the last three days have been so stressful...the adrenaline and excitement of preparing to leave in 4 days, then the disappointment of learning that we still don't have a travel date, trying to figure out how to complete three assignments for my master's class before we left (about 35 typed pages), planning and preparing for a Fourth of July cookout at our house, worrying about an email I shouldn't have sent, getting almost no sleep for two days, and still being wife and mom. We could have been getting on a plane headed for Bulgaria, but I was sitting in an empty parking lot instead.

I have had a lot of practice in acting calm in the middle of a storm, but today...I was overwhelmed. I cried off and on all day. Even the boys knew I was out of sorts and I think it worried them, too. On days like today, the adoption journey feels like you are floating on a tiny raft in the middle of huge ocean waves, all alone, without a life jacket. You start paddling in one direction just hoping that you are going in the right direction toward shore, but knowing that at any moment one of those waves could destroy your raft and throw you coughing and sputtering into the sea. Today I'm drowning.

I remember the last time that adoption paperwork didn't arrive on time and timelines kept being changed and extended. We got our hopes up and then got a call saying that the Chinese government had decided, "they could find a better family" than ours. And today I realized that the same thing could happen to us again...

Today, I put away all of the suitcases; I put the beautiful little lavender doll and toys in the closet and I didn't watch the video tonight with Mark. I just couldn't...