Referral Story

I've been waiting 4.5 years to write this post.

On one of the adoption Facebook pages I follow one of the members was mentioning how she was tired of the process and called it adoption fatigued. I sympathize with that. But then I decided it goes farther than that. I looked up some other words for fatigued or tired - and there does seem to be layers of it. When you are talking adoption especially. There is the point where you are simply sick of the paperwork, tired of waiting for a referral, drained by the waiting and the never ending changes to the process, weary of fighting for something that you think should be simple. As the months and years go by you seem to hit different levels of tired. Being that we still have court process ahead of us - and then will need to fight to get the kids home I know that we are still going to hit some of these feelings.

However for the first time I have hope that there will be an end to this game. For four years we have sat, prayed, and waited. We have filled in more paperwork than I can even begin to describe to you - and have lots more to go. And I don't mind telling you that in the last two weeks I hit my emotional wall. It was just enough. I was exhausted by a process that seemed never ending. I cried one night over the fact that our paperwork was going to expire - again in 7 short months, and that I would have to renew it - again. I was done. And I was a little annoyed at God for bringing us this far - and then doing nothing. I began to beg Him. I prayed daily that He would reveal our kids to us. Being as we were asking for older kids I knew that they were alive out there somewhere. I reminded Him that in the Bible he promised not to leave us as orphans and begged Him to bring our kids to us so that we could redeem that promise and be a family. I cried - A lot.

Then last week on Monday night we decided to send a e-mail to our agency. Referrals from the agency had slowed down in the last few months and we just wanted to talk to our director to find out what was going on. I have found in this whole process that I need lots of information. If the wait for a referral was going to be longer - than I needed to know that. My mental state was low and I needed some real communication as to what was going on. Our director phoned us back on Tuesday. We had a great talk. Referrals were coming slower than in the past. One of the many reasons for that is that there are more agencies doing adoptions in our country now - so that the referrals have to be spread out between them all. She told us though that they were telling people that it could be up to five months for a referral, but because we were open to older kids that it would probably be shorter than that. She also confided that she had given a referral to another couple that morning - so that they were still coming in.

I walked away from that conversation feeling encouraged. Talking over process with the person in the know always makes me feel better. I also loved that she knew who she were and what our situation was. At our last agency I always felt like every time we phoned in that they had to look up our paperwork in their files to know who they were talking to. This lady knows who we are and where we are in process by just hearing our names. That's encouraging to me - it means we are real people to them - not just a file or a number.

I was prepared for a wait of a few months for a referral. I prayed that God would either let it happen before Mark went to Peru - or after he came home. I never imagined that it would happen so soon - or that she had the paperwork sitting on her desk - it just wasn't official yet, so she couldn't talk about it.

To be continued ....