In the next few days, I will get our final documents notarized.  I will snuggle the final pieces of our Ethiopian dossier into a FedEx envelope and drop it into the mysterious box in front of the post office.  After three months of typing, printing, collecting, gathering, stamping, notarizing, meeting, calling, emailing, and investigating, I will hand these pages that I have lovingly assembled over to strangers, strangers who will ship them to and fro, stamp them some more, and eventually translate them into Amharic, this incredible language unique to Ethiopia.  These pieces of paper, my life rendered in black ink, will lead me to my child.  It’s strange.  With pregnancy, I had blood tests, peed in plastic cups, listened to the heartbeat, saw the squiggly ultrasound.  My eating changed.  My pooping changed.  My belly changed.  My butt definitely changed.  I had lab results and doctors’ appointments and birth classes.  With my next baby, I have these documents.  And now I’m sending them away.  I’ve hurried and hurried to get to this point when my baby is no longer waiting on me.  I’ve done my part.  And now…I wait.  This adoption is no longer in my hands, not that it ever was, but the small sense of control that I’ve felt over the last three months, the satisfaction of contributing, of working toward something, is leaving.  I wait.  I wait on strangers.  I wait on God.  With each of my children, God has called me to wait.  That’s my place, my journey.  It’s a familiar path, but no less painful, even after years of practice.  Painful, yet beautiful.  I’ve never felt more connected to the heart of God than in my waiting for children.  I want to hold my baby right now, but as I comtemplate the indefinite wait ahead, I know that God will use this uncertain time for His glory.  Will I waste it with anxious thoughts or will I choose to glorify God through my waiting?  God, let me choose the latter.

Tags: Adoption, Africa, Ethiopia, Family, Infertility