It's been a busy month over here, but I have a couple hours to myself today and wanted to sit down and update y'all on where things are at in our adoption process. Last time I blogged, we had just gotten our LOA. Since then, we sent away for and received our visas, and we also received our Provisional Approval from immigration. Our visa information was then cabled to the US Embassy in China (which was delayed a day due to the typhoon there). Right now, we are in the middle of the "Article 5" process. This is normally a two week process, but it will take us three weeks, because of the National Day Golden Week in China next week. After our Article 5 pickup on October 9th, we will begin waiting for our Travel Approval (TA), at which time we can secure a Consulate Appointment and book our travel arrangements!!! EEK!!! At this point, if things go smoothly, we could be traveling in early November.
The wait is starting to really draaaaaag the closer we get to travel (kind of like those last couple months of pregnancy), but God has blessed us with so many joyful gifts as we enter this last part of our wait. First, we received some incredible, generous financial gifts in the past month! It has been so fun and miraculous to watch how God has used so many of His people to play a part in bringing Crosby home. Secondly, several people who have been to Crosby's orphanage and met/played with him have gotten in touch with me. We've been blessed with some older pictures and a couple of updates on how he's doing, and it's just given us such a lift on those days when the waiting feels hard and long. We got the crib put together in the boys' room, bought a car seat, and we're starting to pull together things we will need for travel. I've planned a freezer meal day with my mom and sister, so we can have lots of meals ready to heat up when we get back home. This is me... doing what I can to remain sane while I have a child (whom I've never met) that has completely stolen my heart... on the other side of the world.
I'm reminded every time a sibling fight breaks out, every night I can barely keep my eyes open, every time I do our banking, and every time I have to pile everybody into the car for something, that we've already "got our hands full." I think most moms also feel this way, but there a lot of days I feel like a juggler who is just bound to drop a plate. I don't have it all together...none of us do. But it's in those moments of feeling oh-so inadequate that God lifts us up. It's then that we truly see our need for Him. When we're weary, He offers us rest (Matthew 11:28). He gives us peace (John 14:27) in the midst of our chaos. He gives us unconditional love to share with our children and others around us (1 John 4:19). And, He equips us with what we need to follow His will (Hebrews 13:21). Sydney and I are reading through Kisses from Katie right now, and it's been so encouraging. Just this morning before I dropped Syd off for her hybrid classes, we read these words that I could've written myself: "When I thought about Mary, I decided not to strive to be a perfect mother but to simply endeavor to be like she was--completely unprepared but ready to take the child God handed to her....Mary was a mother. I am a mother. As long as God keeps giving me these precious children of His, I will continue to love them to the best of my ability. I will be an inadequate, uncertain, loving-with-everything-I-have, filled-with-more-joy-than-I-deserve mother. God has a way of using inadequate people, and sometimes He calls us to reach a little higher or to stretch a little further, even when we feel we can't do anymore. We simply trust Him. And then, He gives us everything we need to do the 'more' that He is asking of us."
Simply trusting Him,
k.
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."
Hebrews 12:1-2 ESV
