Current Emotions toward this Adoption

Not everything is fine and dandy during an adoption process and occasionally you do get discouraged. Currently I feel this adoption is never ending. When we started this process in June/July 2008, we were for sure our family would be complete during family reunion in the states, come this November (next month). Now 15 months later we're still sitting here, not even having a referral. Kind of funny how the prospectively shortest adoption is going to be the longest. We adopted from Vietnam, which was a relatively speedy process. We applied with our agency in March of 2007 and met our baby girl in March of 2008. Our Taiwan adoption was super quick and even our former agency mentioned that they haven't seen a referral go out in such a short time (predicted wait was 12-18 months after dossier was finished). We signed with our agency in March of 2008, got our referral in August and brought our Benaiah home in January (10 months from beginning to end, and in my opinion, this is how adoptions should be).

Our Ethiopian adoption seems to be never ending. I'm so so so ready. I feel like I've been walking around with a giant, very pretty wrapped up gift box for many months now, and I'm not allowed to look inside. I take that box everywhere with me, while cooking, walking, reading, sleeping etc etc, but cannot open it. I'm ready for my box to be opened and see what God has put inside for us. I'm so ready to know who our newest family member will be.

My invisible gift box I carry everywhere with me :-)

I really got my hopes up at the beginning of this week when I heard that two referrals came in with our agency last week. A couple received a referral of a sibling group (boy and girl, both infants), and their wait is usually the longest. That couple waited a bit over 5 months. I thought "Wohoo, we're on a roll here, things are finally starting to move!", but I guess it was not so.

I'm so eager to know who she will be. Will she be very little or will she be walking already. How will she look like? Who will God bless us with? We're at week

(19 weeks since log in)

since our dossier was logged in. Sometimes I wonder if maybe our file got lost, or if we just haven't been found to be the right family for a specific child yet. As you know, our agency and orphanage doesn't work with numbers and who is in line next. Ones file goes to the orphanage and the staff meets on regular bases, to do the matching process. I've heard of one lady who waited 4 (!!!) hours to be matched after her file was logged in, and other couples wait close to 7 months and sometimes over 7 months. Our agency reassured us so, that the average wait is 4-6 months.

I'm really weary today. Tired and done comparing time lines of other families, done with checking out hair products and hairstyles for Afro-hair, done reading 5000 different blogs about Ethiopian adoptions and racial issues,and so on.

(me, after many months of comparing time lines, Afro-hair, ET blogs, Racial discussions etc etc)

And all boils down again to GOD and HIS perfect timing. I must keep reminding myself that HE has THE perfect plan for us, no matter who our baby will be, or how long that process may still take.

Compared to our countries adoption time lines, ours is still somewhat short. China is currently up to 4-5 years of a wait, AFTER you get logged into the system (or Dossier to country). I couldn't imagine having to wait that long!!

I know, I've done a lots of complaining and I shouldn't. Just thinking of the 15 months ever since we applied with the agency - 15 months of waiting - I'm just tired today :-(