8 Months

This is month number 8 in our wait for a referral. We've known of families waiting for as long as 11 months and then 6 - 8 more for travel. To date I haven't heard of anyone waiting longer than 11 months without special circumstances, for example the courts are undecided if the child is adoptable. Being this far along and our agency having been in Thailand twice since we put him on hold, once since the dossier went, I don't think we will fall under the special circumstances label. Therefore, I have to comfort myself that we surely will get our referral in the next 3 months. It's not really monumental, having a referral in hand as there is still a long wait, but the counting can begin. We can know that within about 8 months we will be traveling. In late fall of 09 I really had to mourn the fact that the dates we thought we would be traveling were going to be inaccurate. I was very prepared emotionally to pick up our sweet boy this spring, now it will likely be late summer or fall. Amazingly time keeps marching on, as if we are not waiting, and as if there is no hurry...sometimes life and time are harsh. It seems time is always the enemy, we are constantly asking for more time, or wishing time would pass more slowly...or quickly. Rarely do we just sit content in the time we are in. That's my goal for this new year, to sit content in this adoption. I think, generally speaking, I am a pretty content person, as I said, generally speaking. I don't live for whatever is next on the calendar, I figure it will get here. I also prefer not live for the future as I think it would make life exhausting and disappointing. Contentment with this adoption has been a different story, the longer we wait the more discontent I sometimes feel. When we started this process I compared the wait to the years of waiting for our first child. It has been remarkably similar. There was nothing we could do to make my body carry a child except pray, there is nothing we can do to hurry this adoption along except pray. We had no time frame as to when I might be able to deliver a child, we are without a time frame right now as well. One thing that did come from the years of waiting and frustration was an overwhelming desire to be home with my baby. Of course every mom wants that...I think, but this was so deep and unquenchable. I worked full time when Hayden was born and had to continue for a time, but within a year God had allowed me to move to part time and 6 months later I was home full time! The wait and yearning created a different me, a mom that was willing to give up anything to be with her child. And we did make some big sacrifices...like a normal house. We moved to a 750 sq ft. trailer at the seminary Veldon was attending. Although small we found that trailer to be a gift. From that moment on I've just been a mom, I've had part time jobs here and there and worked full time for about 3 months once, but I'm a mom. I don't leave my kids very often I just can't stand it! When we go to Thailand it will be the longest my kids have ever been without me. I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that my first job is to my husband and my children. I've had to make sacrifices, as all moms do, but I think that God allowing me to wait so long for my first child changed my heart more than anything. I don't believe there is anything more important for me right now. Our pastor said today that the number 1 priority (or job I can't remember) of a mom is to maintain the home and nurture the next generation. I completely agree! God has called me to this; there's nothing more important for me right now. There will come a day, in the very distant future that I will have the freedom to do more, but for now my priorities are the 3 (4) lives given to me. I asked a friend of mine last fall, who has a 4 year old from China, if she found it difficult to slow down when they brought their daughter home. They have older children like we do so I wondered about the transition, she just laughed and said it was a joy and there was nothing difficult about it. What an encouragement! (They have just begun another adoption from China.) So my prayer, after this long, rambling entry, is that God will use this time of waiting to do a work in me as he did the first time we waited. Of course he will, he only has our good in mind. Sometimes I shutter at the thought of what kind of mom or person I might have been had God not brought such trails into my life. What a wonderful and gracious God we have who uses every opportunity to teach us and mold us into the person he desires for us to be, I'm afraid there's much more work on me...maybe that explains the wait!

So tomorrow is another business day, and like everyday before it I hope and pray that it will be the day we get the call that our referral has come. If not we'll move on and pray for the call to come on Tuesday! :)