Today There are Tears

Here it is - a beautiful Saturday afternoon in NC, and I am here, sitting in my kitchen, typing through tears.  Things are moving right along with the Department of Immigration.  They've had our application for 2 weeks now and we just received our fingerprint appointments in the mail yesterday.  Fortunately, we were assigned to their Durham office - the other NC option being Charlotte.  So next Friday, we will go get those done and shortly there after we should receive our approval to bring a child home from China.  This is great, because it doesn't look like it will take the full 90 days at this point.  Keep praying!!!

So why are there tears?  Because I'm a girl.  Because I'm a mom.  Because my Type-A personality hates waiting for other people to do their jobs, even if they're doing it well.  I want my son, what can I say?  The US Department of State handled our issue with the unknown signatures and forwarded our packet on to the Embassy.  More good news.  The bad part - that was 2 weeks ago, and we haven't gotten anything back from them.  The Embassy has had our packet for 2 weeks, their process runs about 7 business days, and our return FedEx isn't in the system yet.  Granted, they received it on a Friday, and one of those days was a US holiday (Think the Chinese Embassy closed for Memorial Day??), but, I can't help but be terrified that something is wrong or that something has gotten lost in the shuffle of it all. I'm sure it's all okay, but I just want my son!

We have some friends who travelled to China to pick up their son back in February.  They keep a blog going as well, and it's been so fun to look at pictures of their family coming together with their sweet boy.  But, man!  It also makes the fact that I am here and my son is still there an even bigger reality.  So, today there are tears.  Today, the emotions are flying high.  Today, I am mourning the time I am missing with my boy.  Today, my arms ache a little more than they did yesterday.  Today, there are tears.

Thank you again for all of your prayers.  Please keep them coming.  Love you all!

Somewhere, Out There

So it's been a while since our last update.  We have officially entered into the dreaded "Waiting" phase of our journey.  As of May 4th, we are Home Study Approved!  Yay!  That's a good thing!  Last week I was able to send off the application requesting permission from the US Department of Immigration to bring a child home from China.  That process can take up to 90 days, but according to our Family Coordinator at AWAA, they are turning them around in closer to 60 days right now.  Yay! That's a good thing too!  Once we get our approval from Immigration, we will get our last 2 documents certified and authenticated and then our packet will go to China, referred to as DTC - Dossier To China.  That's a big deal, and I am so excited for that day to come!  Please pray with us that Immigration processes our application as quickly as possible and that we will be DTC very soon.

We had some issues with some of our other paperwork last week as well.  The Chinese Embassy wasn't happy with the signature on some of the US Department of State Certification pages and rejected our packet.  Boo!  The good thing is that it isn't slowing us down at all since we are in waiting for our Immigration Application to process.  I was able to talk with a DOS employee and we think we have it figured out, so I resent the packet to her, she will attach signature cards to the documents in question and send them back to the Embassy to process.  What was crazy about it was that out of 14 documents, the Embassy only marked 3 as being unclear, but they all had the same signature on them!  Who knows.  Anyway, pray with us that this get cleared up, that nothing gets lost in all this shuffling of documents and that the Embassy is able to do what needs to be done and gets our packet back to us before the Immigration Application is complete.

On another note, check out this picture:

My friend, Tiffany, and I took this picture of the moon over the Easter Weekend this year.  We were down at Topsail Beach, and noticed how big and beautiful the moon was that night. She's an awesome photographer, so she was able to capture this great picture way better than the piddly camera on my iPhone.  We had been talking about our adoption all evening, so when I saw this big moon, I couldn't help but burst into, "Somewhere out there....."  Fast forward a month, and here Jodie and I are, in a state of idle waiting.  There is nothing else we can do to speed this process up.  That's a hard place to be!  We have been so hands on and so on top of everything up to this point, but now all we can do is wait.  We wait, knowing that our son is on the other side of the world.  We wait, wondering if and praying that he is being well cared for.  We wait, falling deeper in love with his sweet face as we look at his pictures and pray over him.  We wait, knowing that we have already missed 3 years of his sweet life, not wanting to miss anymore.  We wait.  Last night my Facebook App dinged at me and notified me that Tiffany had tagged me in a picture.  How timely!  Don't you just love God?!?!?!?  While I so want to babysit the Departments of State and Immigration and the Chinese Embassy, pushing them along, getting it all done quickly and correctly and such, there is comfort in knowing that my hands are tied.  I have done all that I can do.  There is comfort in knowing that God has brought us this far, and He will hold our hands all the way to the very end.  There is comfort in knowing that His ways, His timing, His plan are so much more perfect than ours could ever be and that He is able to do IMMEASURABLY more than ALL we could ask or even imagine.  And at the end of this journey, He will get all the Glory!

Sweet boy, I will go about my day today, working and playing, while you are on the other side of the world sleeping under the same moon I will sleep under tonight.  There is comfort in that too.  You are so many miles from my aching arms, yet it is a small world, and I am coming for you!  We will be together somewhere out there - out where dreams come true.  We love you!