Another Bureaucratic Update: The Waiting Worked!

For those of you who’ve been following along, lighting candles, sacrificing toner cartridges, or simply shaking your heads knowingly, I’m happy to report a small but meaningful victory in our ongoing Social Security saga.

Kristie’s account is now showing as ACTIVE.

No fanfare or trumpet blast, just a quiet status change on a website. Which, in this case, is exactly the ending we were hoping for.

Looking back, what’s striking isn’t the suspension itself, but the rhythm of the resolution. The letter informing us of the suspension arrived after we’d already spoken with the Federal Benefits Unit in Madrid. The letter gave us 60 days to contest, starting from earlier than the call in which the issue was already being addressed. Classic.

Out of an abundance of caution and a distinct lack of faith in such elegant system design, I filed the written dispute form anyway. AND I then called Baltimore again. This time the wait was only 75 minutes, which in SSA time feels practically concierge-level.

The operator confirmed what Madrid had already told us: the information had been submitted, everything was in order, and all that remained was for someone, somewhere, to flip the switch back on. No way to expedite. No firm timeline. They suggested we check weekly, since it could happen anytime between immediately and mid-March.

And then, 4 February, it quietly happened.

What this whole experience reinforced for me is something I’ve been slowly learning since moving first to Portugal in 2020, and now to Spain: waiting is not a failure state. It’s the default state.

Spain, in particular, has a lot of rules. But the rules tend to make sense, and more importantly, they tend to be real. You don’t often encounter officials inventing answers on the fly just to get you out of their office (looking at YOU, Portugal!). Things may take a while, but there’s a strong sense that if you’re doing the right things in the right order, the system will eventually catch up with you.

This extends well beyond Social Security. We’ve seen it with healthcare, banking, and even something as absurdly elaborate as re-registering a car. The process may involve multiple appointments, multiple fees, and several moments of “Wait, now what?”, but there’s an underlying confidence that the steps do, in fact, lead somewhere.

That confidence matters, especially when you’re navigating all this in another country, in another language, with your nervous system already a bit taxed.

It’s also been reassuring to see small, practical wins accumulate along the way. Getting access to healthcare services that feel competent and humane goes a long way toward restoring equilibrium when larger systems are moving slowly.

So yes, this chapter eventually ended the way we hoped. Slowly. and quietly.

And honestly, after everything, that feels like a very Spanish kind of happy ending.