God's blessings from waiting again

For Abel's adoption journey, back in 2010, I blogged much of the ups and downs here.  On this journey to our newest waiting little boy (W, for short), I haven't blogged nearly as much.  There have been a few reasons for this change: I was dealing with chronic back pain, I was teaching first grade, and I did not have many updates to share.  With Abel's journey to us, we had the upcoming court dates to pray for -- two of which failed -- and all of the pain in delays with those.

Our newest family member is no less cherished.  We have his sweet face staring at us from our computer desktop and in various places around our house.  We refer to all the things we want to do with him when he comes home.  We pray for him every chance we get.  Already, Abel loves him more than we ever dreamed possible -- even before meeting him.  Abel talks to W's life-sized picture tacked up on our refrigerator; Abel "feeds" him snacks; Abel shows him the class picture of my first graders; Abel tells him secrets.  

Seeing this journey to W has helped Abel tremendously in understanding his own adoption journey.  Abel has heard us talk about Ethiopia and us bringing him home, but because he was only fifteen months old at the time, he has no recollection of the process.  But with W's adoption process, Abel  has been asking deep questions about where birth mommies and daddies are, and what happens with forever families.

We have been dealing with the struggles of waiting for our child again, just as we did with Abel.  This time around, we had more realistic expectations on time frames and delays.  Since August, our social worker anticipated that we would travel within January.  Obviously, that did not happen.  The tricky part has been in knowing whether to make plans for upcoming events locally or assume that we will be traveling to Uganda during those times.  

I do so long to meet our little boy and my heart breaks for him having to wait in an orphanage for us.  And seeing his sad brown eyes and puckering frowning lips in the few pictures we have of him only burns more urgency to bring him home, to show him love and comfort.  The beautiful part of this second adoption journey has been God's peace.  Seeing Abel's journey come to fruition, even after the delays, and having him home with us for these many months, has granted a fuller perspective to the waiting.  Even while it feels like eternity being separated from our child, we know that in God's timing, and by His will, our child will come home.

As I've had to do with our first two children, God brought me to a place of submission last week with W.  I had to relinquish any rights I felt like I had over him.  He is only entrusted to me as God's gift; W -- like Adrianna and Abel -- is not truly mine.

Today we received the update from the orphanage director (via our social worker), that the orphanage has paperwork that needs to be renewed with Uganda before any more families can come.  He hopes (and we pray!) that this will happen within the next few weeks, so that we will be allowed to come, possibly by April.  As this is the only updated time frame we have been given, we are grateful to finally hear word.  I know it's still quite possible that more delays can occur.  But I'm praying that this paperwork will be cleared through Uganda even faster than the orphanage director anticipated.

For now, I'm praising God for healing my back: one less hurdle in the way for our journey to our son!