confessions of a broken heart

mother's day this year was bittersweet. i was so thankful to spend the day as a family and dave made sure we did whatever my heart desired. last year i asked dave to help our kids make me pages in a scrapbook that i wanted to keep over the years. i had this idea from a magazine and thought it was perfect-because being me i would want to keep every card they made, plus i love scrapbooks! i actually walked in on dave helping beniah this year (i came home on my lunch break and surprised them!), but didn't take a peak because i really did want it to be special. so while dave was getting breakfast ready (strawberry crepes, yum!) beniah hands me my book and climbs into my lap. we open to the first page and i show him the page he (dave) made last year and how big his hand has grown since then! we giggled and beniah turned the page. this year's page had pictures of both beniah and hanul with "happy mother's day 2012! love, b & h". i immediately teared up. i wasn't expecting to see her in my book quite yet.

i tell everyone who asks that i have two kids. i tell them about beniah and my daughter hanul. i explain that she is not quite home yet. but i really do love her and see her as my daughter. but i realized something. i've been guarding my heart the past month or so. there are definitely days that dave just looks at me and knows that i'm thinking of her and i can't help but cry out that i miss her. i started collecting items for a care package to send her a couple months ago and still have not sent it off. bad adoptive mother..i know. i'm sorted through clothes we've received, but i keep tucking them in the back of our closet. i want her home so badly that its very hard to confront the fact that she isn't here. but i know this is not fair-for her or me. she is still my daughter and i love her no matter where she is.

i never thought we would have celebrated mother's day without her here. when we had her referral the latest we thought we would travel would be february. whenever i look at the calendar i still can't believe its may. i'm almost in denial about it. i need to recalibrate my mind. hanul's homecoming will not be when is convenient for our family or when our agency thinks it will be. it will be exactly when God has intended it to be all along.