Of watches and Morning Glories

My poor neglected blog.  It has been almost a whole year since I have written.  To be truthful, for most of the year, whenever my mind has turned to this blog it has been to wonder:  How do I take it down?  How can I archive the posts before I do that?

But here I am.

It has been a long, difficult year.  Several events from this year deserve posts in their own right and I won’t begin to try to summarize here.  Let me just say it has been an difficult year of anxiety, tragedy, and loss.  Not just one, but several bad events.   And none of that had to do with adoption.

The intensity of the year caused me to pull inward significantly.  I needed and wanted to focus on my family.  I needed to not live everyday absorbed in the waiting and the anxiety of adoption.  I couldn’t get myself to write and I stopped blogging.

So those few people who may, from time to time, stop in on this blog probably are those involved in Nepal adoption.  Am I right?  You already know all the difficulty associated with the last year in terms of Nepal adoption.  You would understand when I say that we basically had taken a “if it happens, it happens (but it most likely will not)” stance.  You would understand that taking that stance broke our hearts because this adoption was still what we wanted with every ounce of our selves but that the posture was needed to keep going.  You would understand the need to let go of the stirring wheel.

Funny things happen when you let go….

You find your hands full when you least expect it.

As we did.

We received a referral.

A beautiful, beautiful little boy.   A bit over 3 years old.

And our hearts?

Well, it goes without saying they are bursting.

It has been several weeks, so why am I sharing this now?

Because something happened this week that I needed to put down:

My watch fell off.

I was sitting at my desk at work.  I was trying to work.  I say trying because so much of my brain has been going into fretting about the wait to travel.  I have been feeling weeks, days, hours, seconds tick by without word from the DOS on the new process for visa approval when here we are with travel approval and, ugh, the anxiety has been killing me!

And my watch just fell off my wrist.  The band snapped in two as I sat there reading an email.  And as I looked at my watch, I felt peace.

There could be no better sign that I need to stop paying attention to chronos and instead pay attention to kairos.  To the idea that things will unfold as they will for a reason.  That everything happens in its season.  That the time in between is not insignificant and is special.

There is a spiritual dimension to time.  The signs are there if we pay attention.

There have been so many moments in the last three and a half years that I have been frustrated or angry about the way things have unfolded.  When I have been upset about how we have lost days or weeks or months or, possibly, a referral.  But.  Every single delay and hurt and frustration along this path led to our file reaching the top of the pile at the same time as M’s file.  And I would not have it any other way.

Moments after my watch fell off, I received a Netflix email that “About of Boy” (bad movie but the title!) was on its way.  I went home and two items — a letter from friends and a gift they had sent from a different location– arrived on the same day.  I felt time flowing, not ticking.

Two days later, my Morning Glories finally bloomed.  The vines had grown tall but had not looked healthy and they had not bloomed.  I felt they should have by now and I was planning on cutting them down.  And then they bloomed.  A most splendid blue.

All good things come.  In their time.