As my wife and I walked back to our car to drive back home, I began to think of how lucky I was to be married to such a patient and understanding woman. You see, amongst the many things that come with being infertile and not being able to have biological kid, we also miss out on all the pre-baby and birth-related activities. No baby showers. No gifts. No visits and cards. No one calling us mom or dad. No bonding experiences. No parties. No decorations. No baby themes. No congratulations. No excitement. But God has blessed me enough to at least share out adoption process with my wife. And on the way home, I realized, in the end - it's pretty much just me and her facing this uncertain and difficult adoption.
I know I shouldn't have to feel indebted to my wife - but the fact is, I do. Innately, and permanently. And I don't mind, in fact, sometimes, it makes me a better person. Perhaps, an even more grateful person. Amongst all the nice aforementioned pleasantries of gifts and congratulations and celebrations, she will also never look at her new born child. Nor watch her child grow to take their first steps or say their first words. She will miss the first teeth that come in, and many other important firsts. Our first interaction with our child will be inside of a social services department building in Seoul, South Korea where we will have a supervised visit as we try not to scare our child to death with our English-accented Korean. No one will be there to congratulate us. There'll be no gifts. No hugs. No celebration. There'll be a judge that will yap out a verdict, then a few legal items, and then the long flight back home where we suddenly have to adjust to being adoptive parents to a nearly 2 year old toddler. And in the face of this challenge, my wife stays incredibly strong and her faith in me, in us, never wavers. Ever.
And so for this reason, I try my hardest to be that crowd, the friends, and the person that will always congratulate her and make her feel special. To help her celebrate our life, even when everyone else has so much going on in theirs (especially now that our siblings have multiple children). And so I take her on trips and see her smile, see her face light up as we share experiences. I try to hold her just a little tighter and longer and make her laugh - its what I should do and just a few of the things I want to do. I take her to events and places that make her happy. Try and go to bed early and watch TV with her instead of working. And take the burden of the immense paperwork and legal hindrance that has become our adoption process. Try to find time to spend with her family and our niece and nephews to make us remember the family that surrounds us. I strive to be the support she needs and the husband that I have to be. Because, for the time being, that's all I can do. It's the little that I can do to try to make our lives better and to give my wife something, anything to look forward to. For all that my loving wife has suffered through, in the end, my devotion to her, while somewhat rooted in gratitude for her sacrifices, is more heavily rooted in the depth of our marriage. A marriage which has evolved and grown from the naive, yet meaningful love of our youth in to a resilient and enduring story laced with ardor. So to her I would like to leave this quote:
"I could not tell you if I loved you the first moment I saw you, or if it was the second or third or fourth. But I remember the first moment I looked at you walking toward me and realized that somehow the rest of the world seemed to vanish when I was with you."
