The extra room

Another school year ended with so much added to our recent chapter of life experiences. I rejoiced that our paperwork finally made its way to Colombia. I also celebrated when I heard enough donations came in to match our twenty-five hundred dollar Matching Grant! A long, challenging year now ended with blessing and hope.

I left my classroom as ready as I could for the possibility of a substitute starting the following year for me in my absence in case I found myself in Colombia in August. I wrote seven full weeks of plans, including all the daily procedures I teach at the beginning of the year, but I still desperately hoped God might get us there and back before the following school year. Though highly unrealistic, I knew my God was able.

I grew closer to Viviana with every phone call I made to her. I treasured her voice, one of the sweetest sounds to my ear, and I couldn’t imagine my life without hearing the sound of that voice eventually in my home. A curious little thing, she asked questions about anything and everything.

“What’s your favorite color? Where do you work? Do you like your job? What are you wearing? What is David doing right now? Where are you?”

She wasn’t content with knowing the what--she always probed further to find out the how’s and the why’s to everything.

 I loved her more daily, and I suspected she grew to love me more and more, as well. She always wanted to hear Mike and David, too, and she squealed with delight every time she heard their voices, even if actual communication between them never went past the basic greeting.

We confidently assumed we would travel to Colombia sometime that summer to see our children again. With school out, I found an abundance of time to prepare our home for their arrival. Our extra bedroom currently served as an office in our house, with a fairly large desk, a built-in filing cabinet, the computer, and a closet full of Mike’s work clothes. Now we needed to empty the room of its contents in order to repaint it and refill it with things for her.

With a little rearranging and moving things around within the house, an empty room and closet soon awaited all the preparations needed for the arrival of our Colombian princess. We set out to paint her room, and then we enthusiastically repainted the entire house to hopefully welcome both kids home soon.

After painting, I set to work on the décor in her bedroom. Viviana loved the color orange. That didn’t surprise me, since it expressed her vibrant, bubbly personality. She asked for an orange blanket on one occasion, so we bought a reversible comforter for her bed with bright orange on one side and hot pink with orange stripes on the other side. Bright orange curtains soon hung from her window, and her outlet covers and light switch covers stood out on her walls with orange paint. We even found a cute little locker at a garage sale and painted it orange.

Our friends hadn't yet given us the furniture for her room yet, so we put a few rickety old dressers in there for the time being to collect clothing as we accumulated it. I found lots of sweet little toys, shoes, and outfits at various yard sales throughout the summer. I enjoyed every minute shopping for that little girl!

Her room lacked one final touch, the perfect decoration for the shelf on her far wall. I still owned my favorite keepsakes from my childhood, my collection of Cabbage Patch Kids. I had seven different dolls as a little girl, each one with a different “story” and personality, complete with a birth certificate and adoption papers. I took each one out of the box they’d sat in for years, cleaned them up a bit, and carefully placed them across the shelf. I displayed each one with their adoption papers.

I knew without a doubt she’d love those dolls, but how fitting we kept their official “adoption” paperwork. She would share something in common with all of her new dolls. Oh, I could hardly wait to bring her home! Her room cried out for her.

One evening when I called her, I caught her in one of those curious moods. “Where do you live? What is your house like? Tell me about every room in your house!”

We started with the front porch, my quiet, peaceful place where I sat to talk to her. Then I moved into the kitchen and described it to her, followed by the living room, the play room, my bedroom, David’s bedroom and the extra room, which I couldn’t really call an office anymore.

“Why do you have an extra room? What do you use it for?” Try explaining that concept to a little girl who lived in a house with twenty-six other girls.

I had to bite my tongue to keep from blurting out, “It’s your room, Sweetheart! It’s just waiting for you to get here.”