Slow and Steady Wins The Race

People who run (for fun, not after their children) are amazing.

Seriously. It takes such patience, control and steadiness.

When I run, I look something like this. It's wild, un-paced, and has a serial-killer-is-chasing-me tone to it.

Good thing you don't have to be a graceful runner to adopt.

My frantic running doesn't just stop there though; it seems to apply to a lot of other areas of my life. When I go for something

I GO FOR IT.

Crazy eyes, flailing limbs and all.

This adoption has NOT been an exception. I feel like from the first moment we started the process that I had entered some sort of a marathon, sprinting with all my might towards the end. I don't think I have to tell you how exhaustive that is.

In one very real sense, we are in a race. A race to hurry up and wait, and I am very excited to announce that we will get a break from the “hurry up” portion, and have to deal with the other end of the coin called wait.

Earlier this week I was just thinking about everything we have had to do, and I just felt overwhelmed. I also felt like maybe I have been trying too hard to do this on my own. I’ve managed to look past the fact that, yes, there are a lot of deadlines that need to be met quickly, but this is God’s story. Not mine.

Is it going to crush me if we don’t have our child home by my “envisioned” date (can’t share or you will all think I am crazy!) yes. It will be hard.

Do I need to cling SO MUCH TIGHTER to the fact that God is in control, and his timing is NEVER wrong??

Absolutely.

Who knows, maybe God will teach me through this process to run elegantly through my life instead of chaotically like I have been.

Wouldn’t that be grand?

FINANCES AND PROGRESS:

God works in seriously amazing ways. I lose sight of the fact that he actually LOVES us and wants to bless us way too often. The very day I was thinking that things weren’t going according to, "my original time line”, I got an email that all of our FBI background checks came back EARLY and that we MIGHT be able to finish our home study 2.5-3 weeks in advance.

How sweet is that? It's the best news I’ve heard since starting. God is totally good.

This means we are looking at having our home study completed sometime next week (pending no other hiccups) and that also means start to finish time will be 4 weeks. Not too bad seeing how much had to be done!

If that is the case, then we are also able to turn in our dossier paperwork along with our I600a next week as well…

Which means as early as next week we could be on the official waiting list for

OUR CHILD.

I have zero words to sum up how excited that makes me.

That means we could be matched at ANY TIME.

EEKK!!!

That also means that at ANY TIME our next bill (and our biggest bill) of $8500.0o is due upon accepting the referral of our child. As you can tell by our fundraiser over there, we have a ways to go for that. Please be praying for us!!

TeJay has some REALLY cool fundraising ideas to do in the next month, and as soon as I get his “okay” I will share it with you all. It’s pretty stinking cool!

Other than that we are excited to finish hurrying up so we can start waiting (impatiently of course). Ah the joys of this process.

It’s hard, but I know it will be worth EVERY SINGLE MINUTE!

Until next time, MUCH LOVE!

-TeJay, Ashleigh, Eva and Baby H.