A Good Kind of Waiting

Waiting.  Most people inherently do not like to wait. I am usually one of those people (just ask Trace) but as of yesterday I've never been so happy to wait in all of my life.  Yesterday we were placed on THE Waiting List with our adoption agency to eventually be matched with a child that will become our son.  We have worked for the last 8.5 months to be able to get on this list to wait, and I feel like I've been able to exhale after holding my breath for a very long time.  So this is a good waiting.

You might wonder, "How long will you be waiting?"  And the simple answer is- we don't really know.  Our agency has said that the time-frame we should expect to wait before being matched with a child is 6-8 months, so that is what we expect for now.  And THEN it will be another 3-6 months for the rest of the process. Of course we are praying that it's shorter (please Lord!) but realistically international adoption takes a LONG time and we may not even be at the mid-way point between when we started in Feb and when we travel home with our child.  You see, even after we are matched with a child we will wait again for other things to fall into place- a court date set in Ethiopia, our first trip to Ethiopia, an US embassy date to be set, and then the final travel to bring our child home.  All of these will be additional waiting taken one step at a time.  I may have to refer back to this post later as we struggle to wait PATIENTLY at other times, but for now I am thankful to be here. 

I wanted to share another blog post from a fellow friend-in-waiting Ashley.  She posted this on her blog when she and her husband were placed on this same magical waiting list.  When I read it I knew I would link to it someday when I could actually share this news with you- it's a great representation of how I feel:  Wait (wAt): To Remain Or Rest In Expectation