I Don't Think I Thought It Would Happen To Me

It all started when Jeff was gone on a mission trip. I was at work. I was taking 3 – 1-hour tests and I was at my desk on one of my 15-minute breaks. I saw I had a missed call. I checked the message while simultaneously checking my email. It was our agency saying they did not have some very important paper. Being the opposite of the verse in James that says be slow to anger, slow to speak. I quickly called our agency and got voicemail. In my best-irritated, accusatory voice, I left a message implying it was them not us. I had a moment of clarity and realized that can’t be good what I just did, and I apologized at the end of my message. I then proceeded to call my husband, who was on a mission trip, in the middle of a tropical storm, and in my best irritated, possibly even accusatory voice asked if he had completed his part of getting this paper to our agency.

I proceeded to go home over lunch just to check if the important papers were there. While there I called a few friends to vent my frustration. Whew, then it hit me. My adoption agency is not the enemy. They actually WANT to help us complete our adoption. My husband is not the enemy; he is on this crazy, super stressful rollercoaster ride called adoption or adoptwaiting as I like to call it. Sometimes things just ARE, and as much as I want there to be someone to blame often there is no one person responsible.  Even though I like to attempt to through blame around to see who and what it might stick to.

Needless to say our paperwork crisis was solved and I went back to waiting just as I had been before. Or so I thought.

Because when we were waiting to hear if that our case had been submitted to the embassy. I reached a whole new level of adoptwaiting-has-made-me-crazy. We had not heard ANYTHING. I had checked my email easily a million times by this point. I thought I am going to call our agency to see if our adoption worker was in.  My reasoning was that she leaves on her voicemail if she is in or out of the office. If she is out of the office, then more than likely we wont hear anything and that knowledge would give me peace. Or so I told myself. So it has been quite some time, years, since I have called someone only to listen to their voicemail and hang up. But indeed that is what I did. She was in by the way and I was no better off than when I started. At the time I did not see how I was trying to gain control by KNOWING something or by just FINDING OUT information. I had information and I was in no more control than when I started.

Fast forward to this week. We have been waiting to hear from the embassy on our case. Again I thought I was back at where I was before, waiting.

We had not heard ANYTHING and it had been a week since we were submitted. It seemed like other people had received news in a week but we had heard nothing. I began to fret about all the reasons why we had not heard anything. Even in this crazy state I had sound mind enough to help others recognize lies they believed, but I could not see it in my own situation.

Then the pity party started. This was a force to be reckoned with and there was no stopping it now. It all culminated in my leaving for lunch with my co-workers and one of them asking if we heard anything yet. That’s when I cried.

I re-tell these events not stir anyone to feel sorry for me nor am I saying I am proud of all of my behaviors. But I truly believe that sharing in a real way, even though it reveals my flaws and imperfections is one of the best ways I know how to share about what I have learned, things that I am still learning and the things I hope to learn or maybe a better way to say it is things I hope to practice more.

If you knew me before we started this process you might be able to go into the way back machine and recall when I was not crazy. Okay how about less crazy. I think pride blinded me and it was easy to believe that I would not be like “some of those” crazy moms, who were in the middle of their adoptwaiting journey. I love that God has a sense of humor because many times that the very thing we say we don’t want to do, is the very thing we end up doing.

Pride pulls a double whammy because not only does it tell you that YOU won’t be like that but it also tells you can do this on your own. However, most journeys in life are not meant to be done alone. That is especially true for the long, difficult, and sometimes painful journeys that we may be on.

I have learned that while each stressful situation ended. I did not go back to zero; I was still at high alert. So when new stress came I had less and less to respond to them with because I was not resetting to zero. I was still stressed even though the stressor had ended.

I would like to practice extending more grace to myself. If I could deal with me they way I deal with others who are in similar circumstances I would treat me more kindly. It can be so easy to say what could have or should have been done. But as I was telling a good friend it is not always easy to see in ourselves the growth and maturity others see even when we don’t respond, as we would have hoped. I hope to practice seeing these good things in me more in the future.

Do You See That Light At The End Of The Tunnel?

Paperwork and adoptwaiting go hand and hand.

The final step is for us to get an embassy appointment in Ethiopia. At that meeting they will meet with the boys and us and grant the boys visa’s to travel to the US with us. In order to get that meeting, our agency has to submit our application, which includes all kinds of paperwork. Once the embassy receives that paperwork they review it to make certain everything is correct and there. If all the paperwork is accounted for and in order the embassy will grant us clearance to travel and we will get an appointment. If there is missing paperwork. Or errors the embassy will request new paperwork. The new paperwork is submitted. The embassy again reviews this and either grants clearance or proceeds to request further information. And so the cycle goes until everything is in order.

We found out that we were submitted to the embassy yesterday. So we are waiting and praying that everything is in order in our file and no further paperwork will be needed. But even if more paperwork is needed, we know it is for the protection of the children. So even though that does not always make the waiting any easier, we are in support of having these kinds of checks and balances.

We are thankful that we have reached this place in our adoptwaiting journey. The end is closer than it was the last time I blogged. Even if we have to wait because more documentation is needed, we are still near the end of this part of our journey. Feel free to remind me of that if I whine about having to wait longer. : )

The Race

I sometimes feel that adoptwaiting is like running a race. Right now I feel like we are in the last ¼ mile running up the last hill, just before the finish line. I can see the finish line from here. It’s close. But just like running in a race sometimes your tired, you get a cramp and you just want to stop.

But that’s crazy because you are near the end. You can’t quit now. But your body aches, more than usual. You’re out of breath. For some reason even though you have run this same distance, many times before. Today you just don’t think you can do it. I resonate with feeling like this.

Feelings are complicated. We need to be in control of our feelings not the other way around. Knowing and believing this truth does not make choosing it any easier.

I have spent much of my blog space contemplating feelings and God’s truth. That is the crazy thing about feelings they are not always theologically correct. I can know that God is control but still feel worried. This does not make these types of feelings wrong or bad.

I have spent much time mulling over the fact that someone can tell you all the kinds of truth regarding your situation. That does not always take away the feelings. They are your feelings. You need to feel them. However, feeling them, working through them and not letting them be in control of you that can be tricky. Telling your feelings the truth can be a complicated but necessary and difficult thing to do.

So even though I feel like I want to stop running, of course I am not going to quit the race. I may sit and catch my breath. Or I may even keep running. But either way I am going to keep on keeping on.

I have found a lot of encouragement from my Streams in the Desert devotional. One that I continue to take comfort in speaks to how we “don’t need to try to “be strong”, just be still and know He is God.

If you would like to read this devotion you click here.