Who I am. Where we are.

For those of you that don't know me well, let me be the first to tell you that I can be intense. I am competitive, driven and goal oriented individual. You tell me it can't be done? I will figure out a way to make it happen. Tell me what the best is? Well, there you have it. I now have a laser focused goal.

I have called it driven. Others have called it ridiculous ;)

Unfortunately it has followed me around my whole life, though I am getting a bit mellow with age.

Here is a quick peek:
Perfect attendance ALL four years of High School
Music.....oh, man. Let me tell you as a flutist, chair position matters. Embarrassingly so.
Sports.....the one area this aspect of my personality was an asset.
Board games....I am positive I've left some offended people in my wake.
Nursing my kiddos....crazy, right? Must.get.past.one.year.despite.the.mental.cost.of.having.3.kids.in.4.yrs.with.no.bottles.aarrrggghh.
Any task at hand.....must complete with efficiency and sense of urgency.
Height.....yes, height. I have a complex (because what woman doesn't want to be the tallest in the room?) Of course, I don't realize this until one of my other tall friends busts out a pair of heels and then we are eye to eye (Niki). Yes, I am seriously ridiculous.

I am sure some of this stemmed from being the youngest child of closely spaced siblings. 

As I'm sure you can guess - this drive followed me into the adoption process. 

I was the master of paperwork. 

The M.A.S.T.E.R. 
Most people dislike all the paperwork associated with adoption. Not me. I loved it. There it was in front of me. A goal and a chance to be efficient. Is there anything better in life than those two things combined? I think not.

After meeting our social worker in the very beginning of September 2012 and getting the loads of  paperwork we needed to get started, she mentioned that it typically takes families 2 to 4 weeks to complete. This paperwork included doctor's reports for us & all of our kids, 5 page personality profiles on the kids, reports from each child's teacher, financial reports, letters from employers, autobiographical questions for each of us (ended up being 3 or 4 typed pages each), references from family and friend, and TONS of other information that I can no longer remember.......She gave it to us on a Thursday. We (who am I kidding? I) had it done in a mere 4 days and hand delivered (because who wants to take a whole extra day to use the mail, right?) to our social worker on Monday the very next week. Oh yeah baby - of course I almost crippled my hand in the process......but, you know.

Intense.

Next came the activity of the I-600a approval and actual dossier completion. In this phase, timelines can still be controlled by an efficient and effective pusher. I took EVERY opportunity to speed things along. Including walking into the USCIS immigration office to be fingerprinted 1 1/2 weeks before our scheduled appointment on the small chance that they would take us as a walk in. Jason and I waited 3 hours to be fit in. 3 hours. That man loves me. A lot :) (as does his mama who was watching the kids for us!) It was a crazy long time to wait, but it felt worth it, as it saved us a 1 1/2 weeks on our timeline.

I look at that now and laugh.

Like out loud.
A seriously painful L.O.L.

We saved ourselves a week and a half, and now we've been waiting for almost a full year.

The irony.

Oh, the wait. How I've loathed you. How I've learned from you. How I've even loved you at times.

It is no lie that this waiting business is rough on everybody. But with my personality? Oh my. I can't be efficient, rush or control things. However, as you probably can guess, I'm not one to be an inactive waiter. When I am all in at something, I am all in. I will research, read, dig and drag out every bit of information that I can. I must be prepared (even though girl scouting is not on my resume) so in the first 6 to 9 months of the waiting I exhausted our local library on adoption related books. Amazon.com was my friend.

Here is just a sampling of the digging......
-The Complete Book of International Adoption - by Dawn Davenport
-Thriving as an Adoptive Family - by David and Renee Sanford
-The Adoption Decision - by Laura Christianson
-Called to Adoption - by Mardee Caldwell
-Successful Adoption: A guide for Christian Families - by Natalie Gillespie
-Adopted for Life - by Russell Moore
-The Connected Child - by Karen Purvis
-Adoption: Choosing it, Living it, Loving it - by Dr. Ray Guarend
-Transracial adoptees, in their own voices
-Toddler Adoption - by Mary Hopkins -Best
-Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child - by Patty Cogen
-Everything Parent's Guide to Raising your Adopted Child
-Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other - by Simon Scott
-No Biking in the House w/out a Helmet - by Melissa Faye Green

Believe me, there were many many more......

But then as I exhausted all reading materials AND as the wait started surpassing what I ever thought possible, these last few months things have felt pretty bleak. There has been absolutely no movement to speak of, and our wait is dragging out so much longer than I ever thought possible.

However, this week, out of the dreariness came a *glimmer* of good news to this wait weary mama.

After months of seeing no movement at all, it appears that things are starting to move just a bit. That one paper (that I've mentioned previously in other blog posts) so many kids are waiting on, so that those children can be referred out to families? They are starting to be signed in some regions. One of the regions that apparently has started to sign letters again is THE REGION that we must adopt from. When I read the news this week, I nearly fell off the chair I was in.

This doesn't mean that our wait will end soon, but it brings Hope.

Hope that things will start to move for us soon.


Hope that this wait will end.

Hope. We don't have a referral, but we have Hope.
Proverbs 13:12 "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is the tree of life."