Pages

Monday, April 15, 2013

7 Months

7 months.  It really isn't that long, but tonight it feels like an eternity.

My mind is filled with question marks tonight.

There seem to be many people around us in a holding pattern - not really knowing what God is doing, what His plan is or even what is next.  There is a glimmer of what the future might hold but no time frame whatsoever.

We're with them.

Yesterday was 7 months that we've been in IBESR.  Families that went in to that step before us are out.  Families that went in the same day as us are out.  Families that went in after us are out.  But, we're still there.  And we have no idea how long we are going to be there.

I'm incredibly discouraged tonight and would very much appreciate your prayers. 

Our little guy has an important meeting this week.  I have to be vague there, but please be praying for him (and us) this week.

Thank you, friends.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

As Long As It's Not Haiti

It's funny how you end up doing things you said you'd never do.

When we started considering adoption, I very much wanted to adopt from Haiti.  It was the only country I felt led toward adopting from.

But, then I began to learn about how painful it is to adopt from Haiti.  How it takes, on average, 2.5 years to complete the process, how most of the children have birth parents who are alive and simply can't provide for them, and how difficult the process is because of lack of communication and other issues third world countries experience.  And I made the decision we would not adopt from Haiti.

I wanted something simpler.  More concrete.

It took us almost 4 months to make the decision to adopt.  March 3, 2012 we decided to move forward, but we hadn't decided on where to adopt from yet.  My husband had a mission trip to the Dominican Republic planned for later that month and we felt like we had to wait until after that trip to decide.  We went to this website to see what countries we qualified for and we started narrowing them down.  Surprisingly, there were many countries that were automatically knocked out because our family didn't meet their rules.

We narrowed it down to 6 countries - Ethiopia, Bulgaria, India, United States, Congo and China.  And we decided to fast (give up something and spend concentrated time in prayer in place of that something).  Handsome fasted American food while he was in the DR.  I fasted dessert.  It was painful.  :)

During his trip to the DR, Husband met a sweet boy who had been abandoned by his mother, in a Haitian refugee camp.  We longed to adopt him and started doing our research.  We quickly learned, however, that it was completely impossible to adopt him.  We were heartbroken.

Through that experience and what we learned in it, we decided to eliminate all countries except Congo.  And we added in Haiti.

I kept pushing for Congo.  I searched and searched for blogs for people who had adopted from the Congo.  We couldn't find anyone who would answer our emails.  We couldn't join any forums.  It was just impossible to find information.  We called a couple of agencies, but you know when people tell you things in one conversation and then say something different in other conversations?  Well....that.

After a couple of weeks of indecisiveness, we decided to fast again.

A year ago today, I was sitting at my desk in our office and Husband came in from work, looked at me and said, simply, "Haiti."

Haiti.

April 4, 2012 it was decided.  Since then, we have been matched with a little boy in Haiti.  We have met that little boy and we absolutely love him. 

The reasons I didn't want to adopt from Haiti still exist.  We have been in this step of our adoption (IBESR) for nearly 7 months.  I thought that when we got to this part I would feel excited because we had gotten this far.  Instead, it seems the longer we keep going, the longer it feels like it's going to take.  But, I am grateful we are adopting from Haiti and I'm finding beauty in it, even though I'm living through the very reasons I didn't want to adopt from there in the first place.  And Haiti is where our Little Guy is; I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.