With Hope and Prayers!

We have prepared for MONTHS to get our dossier sent for approval.  It's been a constant train trek running through my mind.  Forms to fill out, letters to ask for, notarizations, state authentications, medical appointments, finger-printing, letters to write, documents to dig up, signatures, webinars, and a zillion and one emails!  To think that we started this whole process in January!  And could have sent our dossier to Haiti in June!  And now here we are in October... FINALLY sending it off to our agency for approval!

All along I have thought, "It will feel SO GOOD to get our major paper responsibilities DONE."

So why the nervousness? Why am I STILL thinking about it, and going through the instruction packet, praying that we did it all correctly, anxious to hear from our case worker?  Counting down the days in my head (even though I'm trying SO HARD not to do!), that we may receive a referral?

I am anticipating that we will receive a referral by summer.  I have birth momma on my brain and heart big time.  It's very possible that she has birthed her baby already.  I get very choked up thinking about her.  I have Jochebed, Moses' birthmother on my brain and heart big time.  As my own momma said, "There can not be one without the other..."  That reminder brings me to tears.

This journey is so not about me, and my excitement for our referral, or the work that we have put into our dossier, or the money we have invested in this.  It's not about the referral wait times, or the agencies, or the paperwork.  God's work is so much bigger than any of us can comprehend; and I am humbled to my knees to think that I get to be a part of His work in this miracle called Adoption.

And so it is that Ryan sent off our dossier draft to our agency 2 days ago.  With hope and prayers... not just for us... but for Baby Opia's birth momma too.