Those of you who are on facebook know that we got more exciting news on our adoption this week: Lord willing, I’ll be travelling to meet our new little guy for the first time in August. Yippee!!
(More details for personal friends and family HERE… If you’re not already on my list, you’ll need to send me your email address to receive permission to read… It’s getting pretty near the limit of how many I can invite.)
One of the comments I got was “That seems so fast!” – which is totally true from one standpoint. Considering that we started our home study in January with very little money to contribute toward the adoption, it’s very fast.
But I’m also reminding myself this is just one more step on the journey… And the hardest part of waiting is still in front of me: The part where I’ve seen a little face, looked into little eyes, filed with the High Court asking for permission to be this little one’s Mommy and Daddy. And then gotten on a plane to come home and wait. Ugh.
I’m expecting to learn a LOT about the waiting heart of our Father – He’s in that exact position – WAITING for His children to turn from darkness and come into His light, His family.
Also…While we officially began pursuing international adoption in January 2011, we were working toward being in a place to adopt for over a year before that. In 2009 we began to save and change the way we did things financially so that we could be in a position to adopt. In 2010 I thought it would be months before we were able to jump in – we were just waiting on our rental property to sell. And then it didn’t sell, and we spent much of our savings paying the mortgage that was usually paid by renters. And then our furnace/AC died. And I gave up all hope that adoption was a possibility or part of the Plan for us.
So… this doesn’t feel fast to me. Yet.
But I also have friends who waited 4 years between pursuing adoption and actually having children in their home. I have friends who were sitting by the phone waiting to hear news of Nepali daughters when the US shut adoptions from Nepal down, sending them back to square one.
So: It is pretty fast. But it’s not over yet.
And…while I wait, I have lots to do! So far, the Lord has provided exactly what we need when we needed it – through our scrimping and saving and hard work, and through so many others’ generosity.
We have enough for my plane ticket, but we’ll need more than just that for this trip (half of our lawyer fees, plus my room and board for 2 weeks.) So: Lots of work for me! And then when I get back… I’ll be hitting the ground running, working on stuff for the Etsy shop and some other fund-raising ideas, so that we have the money we need together when we get our court date. We’re likely to wait anywhere from 6 weeks to 6 months for that date…but we’re also likely to get the court date with very short notice (some people – after waiting months - have found out their court date days before they needed to be in country.)
p.s. I’m going to write more about this at some point: Adoption is really expensive. But it’s also really doable. If we – a single income family, on a pastor’s salary – can do this, you probably can too. It has and will continue to involve some hard choices, doing without things I really think I need (I’m looking at you, Kindle. And you: badly in need of a pedicure toes. And you: eating out on any kind of a regular basis.) But it’s totally worth it.
Last year was discouraging, with our furnace dying and the rental not selling. But we also realized after the fact that we’d spent almost as much as we expected to spend on our adoption on those two things. We didn’t want to, but you do what you have to do. It was hard to see that money go, but also encouraging that we got through the year and didn’t tank financially – proving that we could do it again and be a family to a little guy on the other side of the world who’s never known Mommy or Daddy. “Worth it” doesn’t even do it justice…
