Disappointment

I think I've been fairly patient through this adoption journey, and haven't complained TOO much about the redtape and ridiculously-long process. But tonight my patience has reached its end. On my last adoption post I said that we were hoping to go to China in late August/early September. So in my head, I've been planning everything out around that. It's only been a week, but that's enough time for my subconscious to have every aspect of life and all my emotional energy poured into that certain timeframe. (This is a situation where being a very planned and scheduled person is NOT a good thing.)

Anyway, we got an email from our agency today, and one of the things it said is that we'll probably travel in late September or early October! What?! That is not what my internal calendar has programmed!

It turns out I misunderstood something in the timeframe the agency had given us. We're in between LSC (the letter I wrote about in the last post) and TA (our permission to travel, which comes about 3-4 weeks before the actual travel dates). I thought it was 3-4 weeks from one to the other, but it's actually 3-4 weeks after CHINA gets back the LSC that we signed last week. The problem is that before our agency can send that back to China, we have to have pre-approval of our I-800 (the USCIS form we just sent in that "classifies an orphan as an immediate relative"). Each step in international adoption is dependent on something else. You can't do one thing until another thing is completed, and there's no working ahead while you're just waiting. So it's like this big tennis match of paperwork between China and the US, with us intercepting balls at the net and forwarding them on to the other side. The only problem is we have to keep waiting for the government agencies on either side to actually serve the ball.

Nothing has gone apart from the norm for us, but it feels like a huge setback just because of how my mind and emotions were geared up for travelling in a month or so. I've handled all the redtape, jumped through all the hoops, and not complained about it too much, but tonight I'm really irritated with the whole ridiculous process! We were approved for international adoption, and we said we wanted her back in March; she was needing a family long before that. And yet she's stuck in an orphanage another 6 months because of paperwork!? Why on earth should it take so long to get a child into a family!?

Anyway, I know it'll all be worth it when we have her home, and we'll forget all the hassles and delays. And I also know that God's timing is best. It's in his hands, and we can trust him to work everything according to his plan and purpose for all of our lives.

Two good things about the later travel: 1) Hopefully the swineflu quarrantining will be a non-issue by then, and 2) the weather will be cooler!! That is definitely something to be happy about! =)

Well, despite how upset I sound, I really am doing OK. Writing this blog is cathartic even if no one even reads it. =) Thanks for all the prayers and support. I'll post again as soon as I have any updates!