A Long Overdue Update

Those of you you follow Jean's Journey probably noticed that I haven't posted in a while. As the time approached for Jean to return to Colombia, I found it really difficult to think about. In four short weeks, Jean became a part of our family - we didn't want him to leave!

At one point, I asked him "Do you like our family?" to which he wholeheartedly replied "Yes!" I had wondered because we had some issues with one of the kids getting pretty jealous of all the attention Jean was getting, and because - let's face it - with a visit of four weeks, we could only be on our best behavior for so long, and he definitely got to see the real us. I pointed this out to him, saying "We aren't a perfect family." His response? "You are for me." That brought tears to my eyes!

As departure day approached, Jean hinted around, telling us "I don't want to go," "I want to stay here," and "I want to come back someday." The day before he left he told my oldest son at the pool "I want to be adopted, but mamá doesn't want me." Nathan didn't know what to say, since he knew that we actually did want to adopt Jean, but that we weren't allowed to tell him yet.

Kidsave has a lot of experience with this, and they know that such a big decision shouldn't be made in the heat of emotion. We had to wait until two weeks after Jean left before we could send in our Letter of Intent to adopt. Later we found out that the first two or three days after returning, Jean spent a lot of that time in tears. I can't imagine how that must have felt for him, thinking that we had rejected him, that his one chance to finally have a family was lost forever!

Three and a half weeks after he returned to Colombia, we finally got to Skype with him. It was wonderful to see Jean's smiling face and hear his sweet voice again. We heard about how his classes are going, how he's learning more English, and about the festival that is going on where he lives. He asked the boys and I to play some piano for him and we obliged. We remembered some of the funny things that happened while he was here and made silly faces at each other. Then he held up a hand-lettered sign that said, in English, "I REALLY NEED YOU" with a little sad face drawn underneath. My heart broke since we still could not tell him that we were adopting him.

But the next day we got word that Colombia accepted our Letter of Intent, and that they would tell him very soon that his dreams of having a family are finally coming true! Soon I will write about finally getting to tell him that he is going to part of our family - forever!