Nothing new to report.
Still just waiting & praying & waiting & crying & waiting.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
I am getting started on the quilt that I am making for myself. I have it all cut out, David has created the pattern, and the pieces are stacked - now, I just need to get sewing!
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Sometimes, no news isn't good news
Until very recently, I thought that there were times when I manged to be a very patient person, and there were times when I was a very impatient person.
I'm now not sure about how patient I really am. It may depend on how you define patience.
If I have to wait for something, I'm generally fine as long as I know exactly how long I'm going to have to wait. I can wait for Christmas just fine. I can wait for a convention I'm excited about happening here in town next July. I can wait for hours for some of Ann's cooking.
But when all I know is that I am enduring something unpleasant with an indefinite end time, I can't relax. I can't sweat it out. I can't be patient.
It used to be that the worst, for me, was when I'd get sick. I'd have this completely irrational fear that I'd never get well again... not that I would die, but that I would spend the rest of my life hoping to be able to keep down soup and buying extra boxes of tissues. I know it doesn't make sense, and frankly I blame the fear on the fact that I'm sick at the time... but that's a miserable experience for me. I'm a total baby when I'm sick because I don't know when it's going to end.
I have a grandfather who has Alzheimer's. (OK, technically I'm aware they can't say for sure that it's Alzheimer's without a post-mortem test, so words like senility and dementia get tossed around, but I'm not a doctor and I'm guessing you're not a doctor either, so let's just go with this as the default. If you are a doctor, I'd really like to know how to tell the difference between the good pain exercising brings that means you're getting stronger and the bad pain exercising brings that means you've injured something, because I really can't tell. ANYWAY, moving on...) He has been in an assisted living facility for years, and he never recognizes me anymore. We know that at this point, we are essentially biding our time. Anyone who has ever been in this position knows the feeling -- you don't exactly want your loved one to pass away, but you almost feel like it's already happened and you're just waiting for the physical body to catch up. People feel guilty when their relatives with Alzheimer's finally do pass away, because they feel a sense of relief.
We can console each other with the very true observations about quality of life or disappearance of the person we knew and all that, but I think part of our guilt is that we feel just a little bit of joy that we get to stop waiting for that undefined end point.
Unlike getting healthy after a sickness, which is just returning to normal, or a loved one passing after a long bout with illness, which is a sorrowful event that relieves some pressure, we are waiting on an adoption.
An adoption. A moment in time that will forever change our lives, that will turn us for a couple years into the completely insane creatures that all new parents become: exhausted irrational insomniacs madly checking our diaper supply while telling anyone who will listed that the baby made a new consonant sound today and will certainly be as eloquent as Martin Luther King Jr any moment now. The most joyful moment I can currently imagine that does not involve a million-dollar book contract, and frankly all I'd use the million dollars for right now would be to try to "grease the wheels" a little and get this adoption going.
But this is somehow more difficult, and I think it's because the waiting has no moments of progression.
When I'm sick, I can start to notice changes. Hey, I'm keeping down food! Hey, I haven't coughed in ten minutes! Hey, I can sleep for a few hours at a stretch! Things start to get better. You can start to predict when you're, say, going to return to work.
When someone has an illness like Alzheimer's, it's a little tougher because it's slower, and because the milestones aren't good ones. Oh, he no longer remembers my name without help. Oh, he no longer recognizes me. Oh, he doesn't know that he's not in his twenties.
But with the adoption, we're not on a list where we keep moving up until we're next in line. We don't get updates about anything, because there's nothing to update. We wait until we have been selected by a birth mother. We are essentially taking part in a static, unchanging series of auditions.
This waiting is harder than anything I've done before, simply because there is no way to monitor, to gauge, to even guess when it will end. The average wait is between 15-18 months. We have waited 12.5. It seems odd to me that the fact that we are still under the average is supposed to be comforting, but if we go over 18 months we're supposed to ignore the very same average so as not to be distressed.
In the meantime, I have so many friends and relatives who are having children. I've lost track, honestly, of how many of my friends and relatives have had children since we started this process. It's getting harder and harder to share their joy, which feel very selfish of me. I am happy for them, deep down. On the surface, though, I'm starting to question if it will ever happen for us.
Abram and Sarai didn't believe God when he told them they would be parents at their old age. I have to admit that sometimes I think that perhaps it wasn't so much a disbelief that it would finally happen, but an astonishment that God thought they'd be able to keep up with a kid. Or maybe even anger that if He were going to grant that miracle that He hadn't granted it sooner.
Either way... I'm tired of waiting, and I'm tired of not having any news for anyone who asks. My only answer now is "still waiting," and with nothing to monitor I can't give you any more than that other than to tell you that waiting with no updates is a terrible feeling.
--David
I'm now not sure about how patient I really am. It may depend on how you define patience.
If I have to wait for something, I'm generally fine as long as I know exactly how long I'm going to have to wait. I can wait for Christmas just fine. I can wait for a convention I'm excited about happening here in town next July. I can wait for hours for some of Ann's cooking.
But when all I know is that I am enduring something unpleasant with an indefinite end time, I can't relax. I can't sweat it out. I can't be patient.
It used to be that the worst, for me, was when I'd get sick. I'd have this completely irrational fear that I'd never get well again... not that I would die, but that I would spend the rest of my life hoping to be able to keep down soup and buying extra boxes of tissues. I know it doesn't make sense, and frankly I blame the fear on the fact that I'm sick at the time... but that's a miserable experience for me. I'm a total baby when I'm sick because I don't know when it's going to end.
I have a grandfather who has Alzheimer's. (OK, technically I'm aware they can't say for sure that it's Alzheimer's without a post-mortem test, so words like senility and dementia get tossed around, but I'm not a doctor and I'm guessing you're not a doctor either, so let's just go with this as the default. If you are a doctor, I'd really like to know how to tell the difference between the good pain exercising brings that means you're getting stronger and the bad pain exercising brings that means you've injured something, because I really can't tell. ANYWAY, moving on...) He has been in an assisted living facility for years, and he never recognizes me anymore. We know that at this point, we are essentially biding our time. Anyone who has ever been in this position knows the feeling -- you don't exactly want your loved one to pass away, but you almost feel like it's already happened and you're just waiting for the physical body to catch up. People feel guilty when their relatives with Alzheimer's finally do pass away, because they feel a sense of relief.
We can console each other with the very true observations about quality of life or disappearance of the person we knew and all that, but I think part of our guilt is that we feel just a little bit of joy that we get to stop waiting for that undefined end point.
Unlike getting healthy after a sickness, which is just returning to normal, or a loved one passing after a long bout with illness, which is a sorrowful event that relieves some pressure, we are waiting on an adoption.
An adoption. A moment in time that will forever change our lives, that will turn us for a couple years into the completely insane creatures that all new parents become: exhausted irrational insomniacs madly checking our diaper supply while telling anyone who will listed that the baby made a new consonant sound today and will certainly be as eloquent as Martin Luther King Jr any moment now. The most joyful moment I can currently imagine that does not involve a million-dollar book contract, and frankly all I'd use the million dollars for right now would be to try to "grease the wheels" a little and get this adoption going.
But this is somehow more difficult, and I think it's because the waiting has no moments of progression.
When I'm sick, I can start to notice changes. Hey, I'm keeping down food! Hey, I haven't coughed in ten minutes! Hey, I can sleep for a few hours at a stretch! Things start to get better. You can start to predict when you're, say, going to return to work.
When someone has an illness like Alzheimer's, it's a little tougher because it's slower, and because the milestones aren't good ones. Oh, he no longer remembers my name without help. Oh, he no longer recognizes me. Oh, he doesn't know that he's not in his twenties.
But with the adoption, we're not on a list where we keep moving up until we're next in line. We don't get updates about anything, because there's nothing to update. We wait until we have been selected by a birth mother. We are essentially taking part in a static, unchanging series of auditions.
This waiting is harder than anything I've done before, simply because there is no way to monitor, to gauge, to even guess when it will end. The average wait is between 15-18 months. We have waited 12.5. It seems odd to me that the fact that we are still under the average is supposed to be comforting, but if we go over 18 months we're supposed to ignore the very same average so as not to be distressed.
In the meantime, I have so many friends and relatives who are having children. I've lost track, honestly, of how many of my friends and relatives have had children since we started this process. It's getting harder and harder to share their joy, which feel very selfish of me. I am happy for them, deep down. On the surface, though, I'm starting to question if it will ever happen for us.
Abram and Sarai didn't believe God when he told them they would be parents at their old age. I have to admit that sometimes I think that perhaps it wasn't so much a disbelief that it would finally happen, but an astonishment that God thought they'd be able to keep up with a kid. Or maybe even anger that if He were going to grant that miracle that He hadn't granted it sooner.
Either way... I'm tired of waiting, and I'm tired of not having any news for anyone who asks. My only answer now is "still waiting," and with nothing to monitor I can't give you any more than that other than to tell you that waiting with no updates is a terrible feeling.
--David
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)