Two Down

We have now passed the two month mark. At one time that was considered the beginning. Not anymore. Now we are still one month from the starting line....

It is stated that Adoption is not for the faint of heart. This is so true.

People say such things as, "You are taking the easy route," when talking about adoption versus having children biologically. To be honest, before entering adoption myself, I would probably have thought the same thing. But it is not the easy route. Really, I find having children naturally easier... by far!

You have some pain at the end. But other than that I was climbing fences and step ladders right up to my delivery date. Three weeks of morning sickness. I enjoyed being pregnant. My labours were 1.5 hours long.

With adoption there are so many places that you are waiting for approval: approval of first agency application; approval of second agency application; approval from homestudy; approval of foreign affairs; waiting for a referral -

and then you hear that the wait times have just been extended. Now you are no longer waiting 2-6 month for a referral - meaning that we are at the 1/3 mark - now you are waiting 3-8 months - meaning we are at the 1/4 mark. We just went backwards.

I don't dwell on it. I know that God knows our children, and He know when will be the best time for them to enter our family. I might think it is right now. I might want them sooner. But perhaps God knows that our children will fit in our family when certain children are older. Or when my husband is off for the winter holidays. You know?

I don't dwell on it - but I do plan. So now, I have opened my mind up to thinking that if we get a referral by December, that would be good. Well, actually, that would be 12 months since we began waiting, and it shouldn't be that long. But by doing that, I am preparing my mind for a worse case scenario, and I would rather not be sad when it stretches out longer than we were told when we began this process.

And to be fair, it is not our agencies fault. The timelines are changing because the demand for Ethiopian children is increasing quickly. China has changed its rules, and therefore, many families have moved from there to Ethiopia. We are being updated on a quartlerly basis, or as needed. Unfortunately, the last update we got was only a month or so ago, and now the wait times have increased by 2 months! So we can only pray that the referral times speed up!