"Everyone, Please Stop Skating..."

Monday evening, after a call to our adoption agency, I found out that our homestudy (prepared by a different agency) needs to go to immigration before immigration starts processing our orphan petition. This can take 6-8 weeks. Our adoption agency cannot do anything with our documents until they have approval from immigration. At the time of that convo, our homestudy was still being completed. Needless to say, I was angry. We wanted our documents IN CHINA before the end of November. This news means that it may even be a stretch to get them in before the end of December.

Before that conversation, I was just about to walk out the door to make some final photocopies, and mail our documents to our adoption agency. Since the homestudy is supposed to be one of those docucuments, and since I didn't have it, I decided not to bother. The rest of the night, I was fuming over the delays that we'd encountered at the hands of our homestudy agency. I thought it was ridiculous that our homestudy had not been completed yet.

In my distracted state, I went shopping, and left my purse in the cart when I pushed it back into the corral in the parking lot. I didn't discover this until I was home for about an hour and a half. Aside from the fact that my credit cards, check book, and license were in there, I also had my and Paul's passports in there. (Those were two of the things I needed to make copies of when I was planning to send out our stuff.) I knew that if our passports were lost, then we would have to wait about 8 weeks to get new ones... and the adoption process would be stalled just as long.

I called the store. They didn't have my purse, but said they would go get all the carts, and told me to call back. When I called back, they said they still didn't have it. So, I spent the next 45 minutes closing credit card accounts. Then, at about 12:30 a.m. I decided to file a police report. It had to be done in person, so I got in the car and headed to the PD. On the way, I decided to check at the grocery store once more. This time, I asked for a manager. She went to the office and returned with my purse.

Needless to say, I was thrilled.

As I sat in the car before coming home, I thanked God for answering my prayers in this manner. It was easy to see the "lesson."

"I get it," was my only response. I get it that I am just as capable of messing up this process as anyone else. I get it that mistakes happen and no one is perfect. I get it that He is in control of the timing... and everything else. I get it.

So, with that lesson learned, my attitude has been adjusted.

Our homestudy agency had the completed homestudy in my hands on Wednesday morning AND, it was already county certified. (Which is a major praise, because, to certify this out-of-county notary, I would've needed to do some extra traveling.) So, I sent the homestudy to Columbus for authentication that day and hope to have it back on Monday.

In the mean time, the lady doing the homestudy sent it to immigration and asked for expedited processing. If we get that, then our petition could be approved in two weeks.... we just have to wait and see.

I don't know if any of this makes sense to people who aren't/haven't adopted. The process isn't really that hard in itself. It's just that there is a lot to do, and the timing of it all can be difficult. It isn't even that easy to explain why a 6 0r 8 week delay is such a big deal. But, it is.

I am just trying to remember that God is taking care of things.