The Wait

I stole this from a friend who has been through one adoption and is currently in process for their second child.  I needed to hear this today and thought I'd share.  I get to feeling so selfish at times during this process and I forget sometimes that their is actually a living, breathing child at the end of all this whose wait is probably much harder than ours is.  

'About the long wait and many frustrations that adoptive parents encounter on the journey... “Oh my, I can speak to this. First, forget whatever timeline you were given at the beginning. Forget you ever heard that. Put that in the trash can. Adoption will change, shift, slow down, hit snags, be weird, be difficult, take longer than you think, take longer than you can stand. This will happen. This is the normal thing. When someone gives you a timeline, say, “Thank you for that cute little sentence. Flush.” 

Potential adopters, let me tell you this: Get your “YES” straight at the very beginning. Decide on it. Roll around in it. Put it on the table and shellack it. Because you cannot let every delay and snag derail your certainty about adoption. When you say YES, you are saying YES to enter the suffering of the orphan, and that suffering includes WAITING FOR YOU TO GET TO THEM. I promise you, their suffering is worse than yours. We say YES to the tears, YES to the longing, YES to the maddening process, YES to the money, YES to hope, YES to the screaming frustration of it all, YES to going the distance through every unforeseen discouragement and delay. Do not imagine that something outside of “your perfect plan” means you heard God wrong.

There is NO perfect adoption. EVERY adoption has snags. We Americans invented the “show me a sign” or “this is a sign” or “this must mean God is closing a door” or “God must not be in this because it is hard,” but all that is garbage. You know what’s hard? Being an orphan. They need us to be champions and heroes for them, fighting like hell to get them home. So we will. We may cry and rage and scream and wail in the process, but get them home we will.”' written by: Jen Hatmaker

God, please help me to be thankful for the this process and to be patient.  Your timing IS perfect.  And please keep our little one safe, protected, and loved until the day we finally meet.  Amen.  

Dossier...Done!!

That's right; for real this time our dossier is done and on it's way to China!!  All the paperwork is officially done.  It's exciting, but I find myself in a weird place.  A place where once again, we wait.    We are excited, but very cautiously so.  Can't wait to finally get the phone call saying that we are matched!!