I’m not really big into roller coaster rides, but there is one particular ride at Lagoon Amusement Park in Utah that I really enjoy. It’s not really a roller coaster since it doesn’t follow a track, but it sure is thrilling.
What happens is they strap you into your seat and raise you high high high into the air. Getting raised up and up and up is exciting, watching the people on the ground getting smaller and smaller, because we all knew what soon would be happening. Other than the seat you are sitting on and the bars holding you firmly in place, you have nothing else around you. Your feet dangle lazily beneath you without a floor to rest them on.
The concept of the ride is simple. You free fall until you get near the ground, then you bounce back up like a rubber band, go up, then down and the ride is over. The fall is scary, yes, but it’s not the scariest part. What gets you the most is the WAIT! Once you are at the top, sitting 20 stories up or so, you just sit there. You know you’re in for a crazy ride, but you don’t know when it’s going to happen. There’s no clock. There’s no countdown. There’s nothing but time to wait until suddenly, without any notice at all, your ride has begun.
When my wife and I started out on our journey the first time, we didn’t know just how similar our life would be to that ride. Even though the paperwork was a horrible tedious pain, it was exciting to know that we were actually working on something that would bring us closer to parenthood. Once we finished our home study and papers, though, we sat there dangling. Sure, we worked on networking and we spread the word the very best we could, but for the most part we were stuck wondering how long it would take for our ride to really start.
After we had been waiting for what felt to us like a century, my wife jumped on the adoption agency website and started browsing through the different couples just to see when our profile pop up. We were way down the list of couples and it seemed like it would take us another century before anyone even noticed we were there.
So there we sat without a clock, without a countdown, without any way of knowing how long we would have to sit and dangle our legs. Suddenly, without warning, when we were on our way to buy a new frame for our bed, my wife’s phone beeped to let her know that she got an email. She checked the email and our life has never been the same since.
The wait was horrible. The wait was torture. The ride was just as intense. Afterward, though, we got to where we are now with a wonderful feeling of triumph and joy. My heart no longer has trouble regulating itself and my life isn’t bouncing up and down the way it did in the beginning. What a crazy and wonderful ride it was, even though we had to go through that horrendous waiting period.
Thank you for sharing – I was feeling like the only one lately!!
Waiting is indeed awful! we had a similar story to you although ours did not end happily. Even though the birth-mother still wanted desperately to place with us legal complications due to her native american status became an issue and in the end she made the tough decision not to place. After the birth a few months later she tried to see if there were any legal options but sadly no. After being heartbroken for months we are back going through with our plans to try and adopt.
Here’s hoping that we get to come back here and post again on having our own success!