Within the last several months, we’ve been leveraging Eva’s mastery of simple things like patterns, taking turns, being sassy, and managing disappointment to tackle more complex tasks and social situations.

Or we’ve been playing Go Fish. And if I’m completely transparent, that’s how some of this waiting has been. We got an early match that didn’t pan out so we’ve been waiting on a few others. It has been a few weeks of “Any news?” and “Go Fish.” But all things considered, that’s completely fine. We aren’t the ones on the side of the equation here that are desperate to hold our child for the first time. We aren’t the ones who have journeyed down a road filled with painful, endless detours en route to making a family whole. We aren’t the ones battling certain uncertainties and the abandonment of hope. I can’t call our waiting hard. Or even annoying. It just is. And that’s fine. But I’m thrilled for when it isn’t, though, because that will mean that all of those things that I said I wouldn’t compare our waiting to will potentially be over for a couple who has likely long trod a wearying and depleting road of infertility.

That is the heart that we have on this journey: we wish to provide reprieve from the immense emotional trauma that is the inability to have children when they are so deeply wanted. And while there are other circumstances that bring about this pain, our desire is to engage with the pain and long-suffering of an infertile couple and utterly obliterate it with the abundant laughter, joy, and fullness of life that accompany a squishy baby; to take something broken and make it better. To restore it. Because that’s what we believe in: redemption. And why am I telling you this tonight?

Because we have a match.