So Many Questions

A few nights ago I had a new exchange with Eden. It went like this:

I was cuddling with her in bed before she went to sleep, and I said to her (as I often do) “Eden, you know that one of the happiest days of mommy and daddy’s lives was the day we first met you.” I went on to describe what it was like for us to walk into the room and first see her and Caleb, hold them and play with them. She could probably recite this little story in her sleep, as we tell it often.

I added this piece, though: “Eden, we waited and waited and waited until we could come and get you. It felt like forever, but we were so excited when we could finally leave to come pick you up.”

I’m sure I’d said this before — it’s a key detail (in my mind) to her knowing the great anticipation of our meeting. Except, this time, as I said it, her lower lip began to quiver and big round tears spilled out of her eyes. This cry was different than any I’d seen from her before. She proceeded to say, “Mommy, I waited and waited and waited … and you didn’t come. Why did it take so long? Hannah [the woman who ran the orphanage] told me my mommy and daddy were coming, and I waited and waited and you didn’t come.”

Whoa. How could her little four-year-old mind, not only retain the impact of time spent waiting as an orphan, but articulate it? She didn’t just feel the anxiety of waiting four months upon her arrival at the orphanage for her rescue–but she remembered. And she associated that pain with my re-telling of our end of the story.

I can’t tell you the heartache I feel even now as I type. Those four months felt like years for me, but I would bear even more if it meant my little girl didn’t feel a second of it. She knows about her orphanhood and her adoption hasn’t erased that pain, as I’d secretly hoped it would.

Was it worse for her to know we were coming? Did the promise of a mommy or daddy on the other side of the world infuse hope? Or did it bring despair, as visitor after visitor entertained her with games and toys that just couldn’t bring the same security as being someone’s little girl?

*Our* wait was only half the story. And now … now that I know that her wait made an impression, I can only pray that God uses this pain in her little heart like He has used it in mine; that she would eventually see His hand–father-ing her as only He could do–even while she waited.

I suppose the not-so-ironic thing about it all is that the questions she peppered me with that night have been the same ones I’d been asking God  just a few hours prior. Why has it all taken so long God? Why all the waiting? Why all the delay in promises?

As the world has just absorbed innumerable more orphans from Haiti in the past 24 hours, my heart is heavy with the burden of many, many Edens in the weeks and months to come–who will be old enough to know and feel the loss.

Except what about the ones whose wait ahead is longer? What about the ones who don’t have parents on the other end of that wait? What will they do? How will they heal?

My heart breaks.