Another Country Closes its Doors...

Yesterday Rwanda closed its doors to new dossiers being submitted at this time, while they focus on becoming a part of the Hague Convention.  Two weeks ago it was Nepal, and now it is Rwanda.  There are several bloggers that I follow who were on the path to adopt from Rwanda.  Some had their dossier submitted (which it seems they will still process).  Some were only weeks, even days, away, after months of preparing and waiting on paperwork to be finalized. 

I can only imagine the heartache these families are feeling.  Please pray for these parents who were dreaming of the faces of their little ones.  Especially pray for the little ones in Rwanda who still need homes and loving families.  And while it seems that nothing goes quickly in the world of adoption, pray that the Rwandan government moves quickly to restore the adoption process.

This most recent closure reminds me once again of how uncertain this process can be.  It reminds me that our faith cannot be placed in any government, agency, or country, or any child that we hope to call our own.  My life belongs to the savior of this world.  And come what may, I must trust in his unfailing love and goodness.  If every possible avenue for us to bring a child into our home falls to pieces, will I still declare God's goodness?  Will I still run the race set out for me?  How tightly do I hold my future children in my hands?  What if it doesn't turn out quite how I expected (that's happened plenty already!)?  What if instead, God told me that he was going to send us to a place like Rwanda or Ethiopia, and we would care for orphans and widows there?  What if we didn't have a piece of paper that said we were the rightful parents to those children, and yet they all called us Mother and Father?  Does it still mean as much?  Yes.  And while I don't anticipate this adoption falling to pieces, I am reminded again that not everything may turn out the way I expected.  And my babies don't belong to me.  They belong to my Father, just as I do.  I will call them my own, and yet I know their lives are not in my hands, but in the hands of the one who saved me. 

Make a guess, Win a prize...

This is my sad, furrowed brow face.  Aren't I a vision?  :)

Okay, so today I'm feeling kinda dumpy.  I think I'm just a little over-worked right now (wedding season=14 hour work days), so I'm a little tired, and not thinking completely clearly.  So it is on days like these, that I can't stand the wait.  Don't worry.  I'm not depressed or losing it.  Just feeling a little sad for the moment.  It will pass in a little while, and I'll feel fine, but for now, I'll just let it happen.  :) 

So to make me feel a little more chipper, I am going to let you all play a game.  It's called, "Guess the Referral Date!"  Yes, I want you all to make some excellent guesses on when we get our referral.  I know that at least 40 or 50 of you drop by each day, so seriously, leave a comment, because I need the encouragement of knowing people are reading this blog.  AND, if you guess right, I might just send you a little surprise in the mail after it happens!  And don't worry, I won't punch you if you guess way far out (but I may choose not to believe it! lol).

I will give you a little help.  I kind of got the feeling that our referral could come any day now.  Having said that, you never know.  It could be another month or so.  But the feeling I got from our agency was that it was going to be sooner than later.  We'll see.

So please, brighten my day and leave a guess below.  I'll start.  My guess is for September 1st.  Happy Guessing!

*And to make things a little more interesting and fun, feel free to guess the gender and age.  Your clues are:  We are open to either gender, 0-18 months old, or twins.  It is VERY unlikely that we will get a girl, since boys are much more prevalent.  But you never know.  :)  
**Oh, and if some of you guess the same day, I will just pick your names out of a hat for the prize!

3 months waiting...but really 5 years....

Hooray!  3 months ago today, our dossier flew away to Ethiopia.  

It seems like the first month was the most difficult.  I'm not quite sure why.  Perhaps it was because up until then, everything had been moving toward that moment...that goal of sending our dossier to Ethiopia.  Or maybe it was just before wedding season started, and I hadn't gone insane with busyness yet, and had more time to think about the wait.  Who knows.  These last two months have been much better.  Don't get me wrong...I have definitely had really hard days, but for the most part, I've been pretty upbeat.  I may say every other day, "I REALLY need our referral," but still I'm not bogged down by sadness.

Once again I made my biweekly call to our agency.  It always seems to put me in a better mood.  Again, I don't know why this is.  She didn't give me any clue as to when a referral might come.  She just said that she wanted it to be a surprise.  Well, that's a given.  :)  I know that we are all waiting, and we all know that one day we WILL get that call.  But I guarantee you, that even with all that expectation, I will be bouncing off the walls with excitement once we actually do get that call.  And in all actuality, we have been waiting 5 years for this.  It was 5 years ago this month that the doctor told us we could start trying to get pregnant.  A year later they found cancer.  Then we waited for a miracle.  Then we tried foster care.  Then we tried Nepal.  And now we are here, waiting on our Ethiopian miracle.  I simply can't wait!

So as most adoptive parents-to-be do, we are celebrating the three month anniversary of waiting.  So, we decided to go Mexican tonight, and use my rusty Spanish skills to be goofballs in the latest version of "Musings from a Car."

The Heart Behind Our Business...

I'm not really going to talk about adoption today, but I did want to mention that yesterday marked 11 months since we started the international adoption roller coaster ride.  Wow.  I can hardly believe it.  That's how long we spent trying to make things work with the foster care system.  Ugh.  Well, hopefully we'll have good news soon. :)

Today we revealed our new logo for our photography business.  I am SUPER excited about it, mainly because not only does it reflect the business we have with our brides, grooms, moms, dads, kids etc., but it also reflects our heart for the nations, adoption, the needy, the hurting....  I am thrilled!  So if you want you can swing by our photography blog and see the new logo, and the explanation behind it.  Stop by if you're curious!  :)