Where are we?

I seriously wish that I could tell you we are home or leaving in the morning for home, but about the best I can say for now is I am picking up Anna's passport tomorrow. Even though I am so VERY thankful that it finally came after THREE weeks, I am so VeRy homesick that it hurts. I am sitting in a hotel room alone and have been crying for about 30 minutes. The tears, they come and they go, but tonight they won't stop falling. I talked to my mother-in-law tonight and she told me something that just broke my heart and I can't seem to shake it. As I have said before and most of you know, our biological daughter who is 11, also has Down syndrome. She is my girl and we are TIGHT! I have been gone for over 3 weeks now and she has no understanding of where I am, what I am doing or when I am coming back. She asks about me every day but as I said she doesn't understand anything that is going on. Sometimes she will talk to me on the phone and sometimes she won't. It upsets her, as well as me, when she will talk to me. I hang up the phone and then I cry. I cry for her , I cry for me. I just want to go home Lord, I just want to go home. We really thought that this THIRD trip would be over in about 2 1/2 weeks. Obviously this didn't happen. Yesterday made three weeks that I have been gone and I haven't even picked up her passport yet. Yes I do pick it up tomorrow and just found out this past Friday that it would be ready tomorrow. But there is still quite a bit to do here before we can leave and I still don't have a date that we can book our flights home :(. Yes we are on the path to leaving but with each day here there is still pain in my heart for my children at home. So about this morning, Ashlyn woke up and yelled for her me maw so that she would know she was awake. When me maw was on her way up she heard Ashlyn saying "mom, I'm waiting, mom I'm waiting." This crushed me when she told me this, because I don't even know if I have ever even heard Ashlyn use the word "waiting" and yet she is waiting on me :( to come home, wherever it is I am. The song " While I'm waiting" by John Waller came to mind and made me cry even harder.

I just keep telling myself that Anna needs a mama too, and a daddy and brothers and a sister, and that it will all be over with soon enough. But the physical pain in my heart sometimes seems unbearable. I just keep thinking that this must be like what God feels in his heart when we are away from him, doing other things in our life that keep us from him. But let me be the first to say that I have been chasing the hem of his garment over here, feeling helpless, hopeless and afraid! I've definitely been praying my way through this and asking God for forgiveness for the fears and weakness that I have been harboring the last several weeks. We were told last week that it could be two more weeks before her passport came in, but praise God we got the call on Friday that it will be ready tomorrow! We were so afraid of running out of money being gone so long,but God answered that prayer too! So in the end God is working everything to the good for those that love him. Please keep us in your prayers, as we need them very much!

I will end by apologizing for not posting very much while we are here, but I have just felt too down in the dumps to even talk about it anymore than I have too!

And if you are wondering why I am in a hotel alone, LOL, my mom stayed with Anna back in Mo$cow so that I could take the three hour tour, LOL, back to her city to pick up her passport. The poor dear has been drug all over Ru$$ia for the past three weeks, she needed a break, although I hear she isn't dealing too well with my absence either :(