I apologize for my long lapse in blog posts. (All really
great adoption blogs eventually have a post that begins like that, by the way. It’s true. Check it out
if you don’t believe me.) Anyway, after waiting through (yes, through is the correct preposition to
use when you’re talking about a thick, nasty bit of waiting. You’re wading
through the waiting. Again, I digress…) We waited through more than six months
of an investigation that extended our already lengthy delay in bringing our son
home.
After the six months ended, I called the US Embassy and
received bad news about our case. Our son had been removed from his orphanage
and the paperwork that should have described his backstory was actually false.
We were afraid we had just hit a giant speed bump. A week later, I called again
and the embassy begrudgingly passed his case. They set his appointment to be
interviewed at the US Embassy for September 25. Our heads were spinning. (Side
note: When I picture him going in for his interview, I always think of him
wearing a little suit and carrying a briefcase. He would set it on a desk and
click the latches open, then he would pull out his resume and various letters
of reference. I don’t think it really happened that way.)
We learned that our Congolese lawyer brought our son to the
appointment but didn’t bring all of the documents. (Up, down) A different
lawyer brought those documents the next day and then we learned that another
appointment was scheduled for next month. (Up, down) Then came a much bigger dip:
As I was dropping off the boys who ride with us to soccer
practice, I checked the email on my phone. I quickly glanced something from our
agency but I didn’t get a good look at it until I pulled our van into the
garage. I sat in the garage and read the full sickening email. It contained an
alert from the state department. Here’s a little of what it said: “On September 27, the Congolese Ministry of
Interior and Security, General Direction of Migration (Direction Generale
d'Immigration, DGM) informed the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa that effective
September 25, 2013, the DGM suspended issuance of exit permits to adopted
Congolese children seeking to depart the country with their adoptive parents.
The DGM reports the suspension will last up to 12 months. This suspension is
due to concerns over reports that children adopted from the Democratic Republic
of the Congo may be either abused by adoptive families or adopted by a second
set of parents once in their receiving countries.”
I almost turned
the engine back on and put it in reverse just to get out of the space I had
just read myself into. Nevertheless, I pulled myself together and went in the house. Brent
was making grilled cheese sandwiches to go with the soup in the crockpot. I
took one look at his face and I knew he knew. We suffered through eating with Knox—the girls had already eaten while watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I tried to gulp down my soup and sandwich
then I went to our bedroom to search the Internet for some ray of light. I’m
unsure what I was looking for. Maybe a “Just
Kidding!” from the State Department? Who knows, but I didn’t find it. What
I did find was adoptive parents like me venting and scared on Facebook. I found
a nauseating article about a child who was handed over to another family
and this article is apparently the match that lit this recent explosion from
countries who participate in adoptions with the US.
I left my bedroom and went looking for Brent. I finally
found him sitting in a dark room with the windows opened. He wasn’t on his
phone and he wasn’t asleep. He was just sitting in an armchair. I sat in the
chair next to him, listening to the announcer call the football game at the
high school down the road. Neither of us could say anything. The hopelessness
and the futility of the past two and a half years eventually weighed down on me
and I began to cry. I just couldn’t stop. How many times have we been at this
point where we thought we’d leave in a month or so? How many times have we kept
our vacations and holidays tentative because we just weren’t sure if we’d need
to buy plane tickets and fly across the world in a hurry? What really convinced me of our state of wretched
misery was Brent’s reaction. I held my face in my hands and wept while Brent
sat motionless. In all our years together, it was the first time he was unmoved
by my tears. I realized he was as broken as me. I stood and went to sit in his lap,
trying to comfort as I drew comfort from him.
So that’s where we end our evening, with questions and grief
and anger. We’re running out of the energy needed to get back up to stay
hopeful. Prayers are always appreciated. Thanks for loving us through this.
