Now what?

I told a friend the other day that our amended homestudy should arrive any day now and that will allow us to file our i-600a. She asked me "then what?" I couldn't resist and said "we wait... duh!"

Adopt involves LOTS of waiting. Hurry up, wait, hurry up, wait some more, and then... oh yah... WAIT! You can certainly go crazy with all of the waiting. A wonderful woman at church told me that I needed to wait until our children were ready for us and until we were ready for them. This made no sense to me at the time. In fact I said "but I don't want them sitting in an orphanage longer than they have to, I have to find them so I can go get them!"

We still think we are supposed to be looking for a full sibling set of 4. And guess what... there aren't any! So all the hurrying in the world on our end isn't going to make them show up any faster. So I have learned to let go... most of the time. I am feeling pretty annoyed that our homestudy hasn't shown up yet but I'm not too worked up about it. Now if we had found our little names and faces, then I think I would feel differently.

I think people often see the waiting as a negative if/when considering adoption. From my experience in reading hundreds of blogs, is that it normally takes about a year. You have to think of that time as including trying to conceive. We all know that being pregnant takes 9 months. I don't know first hand, but trying to get pregnant usually takes at least 3 months. So there you have a year (or more) with the biological route.

I know I have said that I feel pregnant by paper, but really the paperwork stage is more like trying to conceive. With adoption that can take 6-9 months. Once you have little names and faces, it is more like being pregnant in that your timeline becomes more specific, you know gender and age, you can plan more, etc. With adoption that can take 3-6 months. The timing is a little different but it all adds up to be very similar.

So if you have ever thought about adoption and you let the timing trip you up, don't. God's timing is always perfect.