I shifted my legs on the warm concrete as my preschooler ran through the yard a soccer ball just ahead of him.
“When do you think you’ll hear anything?” my friend asked.
“It could be any day now. But probably a few more weeks.” I replied.
I did my best to not obsess over the phone call that would change our lives. The phone call telling me to check my email and view the photo of the little one who we would have to accept or reject.
As I went about my quotidian life, filled with naps, meal times and playdates, always, the idea of the call lingered. It shouldn’t have surprised me when I glanced at my phone while my thighs pressed against my friend’s driveway realizing I’d missed a call with a 254 area code. I listened to the voicemail asking me to call back as I waved my kids over to the car, suddenly in a hurry to get home.
I dialed the Waco number while driving the quarter mile, my pulse quickening with each ring.
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“Laura! We have your referral!”
Every adoptive family waits to hear those words from the moment they begin the arduous process. I never imagined I’d be standing in my kitchen, on a Tuesday at the end of March, concrete texture imprinted on my legs, saying, “Yes, go ahead and tell me without Andy. I can call him after I have the information.”
It felt right. Of course, I knew with our two pregnancies before he did. This would be no different. Also no different – the immediate recognition that it didn’t matter what our case worker said. This child – boy. Girl. special needs. Sick. Healthy. Older. Younger. The child she was about to tell me about was already ours. We had a little more work to do to bring him home, but there was no debating or prayer or anything.
The call ended, and I immediately pressed my husband’s name on the screen.
“Check your email!”
Attached were two photos. Two photos of a child I had never met but who was mine. You go through training when you’re adopting all about attachment and preparing you for the fact that you might not feel an instant connection with the child – especially one who doesn’t look like you. Adoption is hard. Adopting a child of a different ethnicity is even harder – and more so for the child than the parents. But the second I clicked that email open and viewed those images, that boy was mine. I didn’t need to conceive him in my womb to know God had knit us together.
Looking back at me with deep brown eyes was my boy – almost three years old. His given name, Elisha. Within the hour we had named him Eli Ryan. Eli Ryan, our third child, our son, standing in an orange striped shirt with lantana curling behind him, waiting for us to come and bring him home.