Waiting through all these steps is so very hard,
waiting to see the little girl God has chosen for us to parent, waiting just to
BE parents, waiting through all the red tape….. But being an orphan and waiting
for the love of your own forever family, must be the longest wait of all.
Jen
Hatmaker, an
adoptive mom waiting in the Russian program sent this to a facebook friend, who is
waiting for their child in the China program. Jen sums it up perfectly:
"ON
THE EXCRUCIATING WAIT/DELAYS: 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 that 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.”
So our wait continues…..no match yet. I’ll keep you
posted!
