In the Waiting Room

One of my favorite Christian bands is Shane and Shane. Their sound is gorgeous and unique, their lyrics come straight out of Scripture, and they’re two boys who are from my hometown! A song of theirs that I’ve been thinking about lately is called “Waiting Room.” The song itself is about the metaphorical waiting rooms we sit in while we wait for our prayers to be answered.

Adoption is all about waiting. We waited to have enough money squirreled away to start our home study. We wait until the home study is complete and filed. We wait until our adoption agency approves our application. We wait for a birth mother match to be made. We wait until the baby is born. We wait for that call to let us know that the TPR (termination of parental rights) has been signed and the baby is ours. Then we wait six months until the whole thing is legal and finalized.

Waiting sucks. I hate waiting. I always have. Waiting is hard. It’s a test of our patience, and sometimes it can be a test of our faith. For both HG sufferers and adoptive parents, sometimes the road we landed on isn’t the ideal one we would have planned on. Aren’t we all waiting for something? Waiting for babies, waiting for cures, waiting for answers, waiting for reprieve, waiting for forgiveness… I don’t think it matters what you’re waiting on, because we’re all in this waiting room together.

I had the idea a few months ago that I wanted a “mean-time” project to keep my mind focused on my mission in the moments when the waiting may become difficult. I wanted to share this project with you not because it’s particularly beautiful but because I think the idea is a great one.

This is my mean-time project:

Be generous in your judgment of my quilting skills, I’m still learning. My sister in law is the advanced quilter in our family.

Working on this quilt keeps me focused on the road we’re on, and every time I pull it out I’m given hope that there will be a baby to wrap in this quilt someday. Little by little, as I stitch this together, I feel like we’re moving forward (even if we aren’t.) These waiting room projects, whether it’s a journal, a scrapbook, a blog, letters, or quilts, keep us focused on the light at the end of the tunnel.

When I was sick with HG, my mean-time project was much simpler, but I cherish it now. I bought a knitting loom and made LB a little blue soft baby blanket. There are some sections of the blanket that are a little lumpy, and the blanket isn’t perfectly square, but I cherish it. I think about sitting up when I didn’t feel well repeating over-under-around, over-under-around… The blanket I stitched for LB is a sweet memento of our struggle together before we’d officially met.

I’ll keep you updated on this baby quilt as it progresses. Just as this project involves multiple steps (and frustrating struggles) along the way, so will this adoption. I’m excited and nervous about tackling both. At the end of it all though, there will be a sweet new baby to wrap in this sweet quilt.

Patience strengthens our character, but it’s a hard-fought virtue to obtain. Prayer aids me in my moments of frustration and doubt, and this little quilt keeps me focused on the end goal.

Kat