The excitement of our homestudy being finished is wearing off. Now I am just ready to move forward in this process of bringing home our daughter. But, we are waiting in limbo land for our adoption agency to make an agreement with the agency in Hong Kong who holds our daughter’s file. No one can tell me how long this might take and no one knows what progress is being made, if any. It frustrates me that we wait here, almost paper ready, and “K” waits as she has been for years in an orphanage. We are ready to adopt her and she is ready to be adopted, but we are being held up by people and paperwork and red tape that has nothing to do with us nor can we do anything about it. That is one of the frustrating things about adoption, the things that are out of your control. I do know that while it is not under my control, that it is under God’s control and I trust He is working things out as He wills, but it’s still hard. I don’t like not having any idea how long this waiting might be. I don’t do well with undefined waiting. You would think by now I would have learned to be okay with it, after all this time, but I still haven’t learned that lesson yet.

Meanwhile, I feel like Satan is testing my resolve. When we started this adoption we thought we wanted a little girl with Down Syndrome who was less than 5 years old. We thought that would be best for our family, but God has worked on us and we have opened our hearts to a child who is different from that. She is 9, almost 10, and has different needs. It took a lot of prayer and soul-searching for me to give up my idea of what was best, to go with what we felt God was calling us toward. I spent months looking at the waiting child website and searching for our daughter. We looked at lots of girls and thought they might be the one, but they didn’t work out for one reason or another. During that time, I was looking for 0-5 year olds. In late June there came a point where there just weren’t any girls aged 0-5 on the website from Hong Kong. I was discouraged and felt like we would never find our daughter. God was whispering to me, “you are missing something, keep searching”. I told Glenn about this idea from God and he really though I was crazy since there just weren’t any girls in our age group, how could we be missing something? So, one day I decided to just look at older girls, just for fun. I saw lots of girls, but one stuck out in my mind. She was just the cutest little thing and so tiny. Her face was angelic and just by looking at her, she didn’t seem to have any special needs. I thought maybe she was on the website by mistake, then I read her file. She had significant needs and she was 9. I told myself she was too old and we couldn’t handle that. But as time went on I began to open my heart to her. Glenn and I prayed long and hard about taking on a child who is older than our oldest, a big no-no in adoption, according to some people. After weeks of prayer and reading all her information we began to feel peace about her. Then we asked for an update on her and our rollercoaster started. As a mom, I dreamed of dressing a cute little toddler girl in frilly dresses and hairbows. With a 9-year-old, who will be 10 by the time she comes home, that might never happen. Girls have their own ideas about those things and she might not let me dress her. To be honest, it took much prayer and soul-searching for me to give up those ideas. But I have clung to the knowledge that God knows what we need and what she needs and He has chosen her for us. Through many events God has confirmed that she is the little girl we are to pursue. That was easy up until now. Now that our paperwork is almost finished there are now a couple little girls on the waiting child website. They are cute little toddlers is Down syndrome. I considered, briefly, inquiring about them. I would have jumped at that a few months ago, but now I just can’t. I know “K” is meant to be ours and even though these precious little girls are cute, they will quickly find homes. We set out to adopt a child who really needed us, and that is “K”. She has waited so long and it is not likely anyone would choose her based on her age and abilities. God was holding her for us, I believe. And now God is giving us opportunity to confirm that in our hearts once again. So, we wait. We pray that soon an agreement will be made with the agencies and we can officially be made “K’s” family. God doesn’t always call us to the easy road, in fact, more often than not it’s the road less traveled. But we know that he is working all things for our good. It might be easier to adopt a cute little toddler, but God has called us to something different. He has called us to “K” and we will be patiently waiting until she is ready. Just as He patiently waits for us when we are not ready for the things he has for us.