“Dear Son,
It’s official. We have been matched as your forever family. I’m ready to hop on the next plane and run to bring you home, but adoption doesn’t work like that.
The wait is excruciating, but you’ve been waiting for 12 years, so my wait pales in comparison.
I’ll have to be patient a little longer. All in His timing, right?
Pretty soon you will receive our family book and with that, you will learn you have a family. And oh how I wish I could be a fly on the wall the minute you hear the news!
Will you whisper, ‘A family for me?,’ while looking at our picture? Or will you be shocked and not have any words?
Will you have a grin that takes up your whole face, or will you sheepishly smile, unsure of exactly what you should be feeling?
I wonder if you’ll proudly carry the book around to show your friends, or if you’ll stow it away to look at it privately.
Will you dream of who we are and if we are nice? Will you study our faces, your room, and the pictures adorning the pages?
Will you wonder what exactly it means to be part of a family? Perhaps you will wonder what kids in America are like.
I don’t know what you will wonder, but if the pages of that book could whisper out to you, it would tell you that our family picture isn’t complete without you in it.
It would tell you your mama can’t wait to tuck you in at night and your daddy can’t wait to cook for you.
(Whenever your brothers ask for McDonald’s, daddy likes to joke and tell them he will take them to McDaddy’s and goes home and feeds them spam and rice. He’s funny like that.)
Those pages would tell you that your siblings are loud, and I bet you will chuckle to yourself because, in an orphanage full of brothers and sisters, you already know loud.
It would tell you that in our house everyone deserves to feel loved and to feel safe, so we will always check in with you to make sure you feel both.
It would tell you that I don’t quite know how you measure love, but if you could see the inside of my heart, you would see there’s no measuring cup in all the world big enough to hold my love for you.
It would tell you that we will honor those who loved you before us, and walk hand-in-hand with you as you wade through that grief.
But mostly, it would tell you that you are a son of a King, the very one who knows your story intimately from beginning to end. The One who gently reminds you that you are not forgotten.
Who reminds you that you are loved. You are worthy. You have hope and a future.
And now? Now you have a family, too.”
This article was submitted to Love What Matters by Holly Romero. Join the Love What Matters family and subscribe to our newsletter.
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