From Baby Steps to a Giant Leap

Have you ever taken a really long trip, especially in the car? Everyone hops in the car, eager to get rolling. The first couple of hours are filled with chatter, loud music, giggling, and excitement about the destination. Somehow, as the hours pass, the enthusiasm for traveling fades and everyone just wants to reach the destination. Usually, as you near your end-point, you begin to perk up and become excited about the end of the journey.

That's kind of how the past few months of this adoption has felt to us. When we began, we were terribly excited to start the process. Paperwork? That was motivating! We were convinced we were going to fly through our home study.And then, we were slapped with the reality of government red tape. The government is s-l-o-w. Fingerprints have to be taken. Papers have to be notarized and then taken downtown to be apostilled. Our FBI background checks took fourteen weeks to return to us. Fourteen weeks to get a piece of paper that says that the Daddy Guy and I are remarkably boring people. Unfortunately, this held up our home study. Finally, on the day that we were supposed to receive our notarized copies of our home study, our social worker calls and realizes that she has our address typed incorrectly on every. single. copy. At that point, I was ready to move down the street to the address on the paper rather than deal with another hold up. Fortunately, she was able to correct those mistakes that very day and delivered the home study to my door. When I realized she was at the door, I got a little crazy emotional and the poor social worker was probably wondering if she had made the correct decision to give us her approval.

The paperwork for USCIS (United States Customs and Immigration Services) come back a little more quickly, thank heavens. More fingerprints follow the USCIS paperwork. Finally, one day, we received a fantastic piece of paper that declared us eligible to adopt from a foreign country. We are ready to reach our destination.

Last week, a large number of papers were packaged up and sent to Eastern Europe in the form of our dossier. On Thursday of this week, they were received and signed for by someone named Ivanoff. God bless Ivanoff. At this point, there is nothing left to do but wait. Again.

Our dossier will be translated and then sent on to the Ministry of Justice of our son's country for approval. After approval, we will be invited to come visit him. We'll get to actually see him, hold him, and play with him. The reality of it is dizzying. Unfortunately, we'll have to leave him there to wait some more until we pass through the court system and can go back to bring him home..

I feel like we've gone through the point of our journey where we've become a little tired of the travelling and just want to reach our destination. Each piece of paper felt like a baby step, and while we were moving forward, it was hard to feel like we were getting anywhere. Sending off the dossier finally felt like we had made a huge leap, and the enthusiasm in the journey has returned.

Throughout the past few months, there have been times when I've gotten down. It feels like we're waiting interminably. But then I think of our little boy. He's really the one who is waiting. We've only been on this journey a few months. He has been waiting for two and a half years. He's waiting to get out of the crib. Waiting for the love of a family he's never known. That motivates us. That keeps us moving forward and pushing people to hurry. It's not so that our wait will be over, it's so that he won't have to wait any more.