It's about the Journey

Our adoption journey has certainly been nothing less than a roller coaster! The up's and down's, the hurry-up's and wait's, excitement and disappointment.  It has been tough!

This month we will have officially been on this journey of adoption for two years!

Two years ago, I believed we would have a child in our family by now.  Two years ago, we thought we would be adopting from Burundi.  Two years ago I had just a fragment of knowledge about the adoption process, and raising an adopted child.

Yes, we have grown so much in those two years.  And maybe that is all that God had intended for us.  Maybe it is not in His plans for us to be able to adopt.  But I believe it is in His character.  He has a heart for adoption.  He has a heart for orphans.

Recently hearing from our Uganda agency has left us more unsure that this adoption will go through.  Again, another up and down to our journey.  But we are hanging in there, because God hasn't told us any different.

Recently hearing about the DRC progress, it seems the wait is very long.  It may be another year before we even get a referral of a child.  And another year after that that we would even get to travel to bring that child home.  Of course, these are conservative estimates, but I can't help but feel a little weary.

Are you telling me that if this Uganda adoption doesn't go through, and we wait on the DRC adoption, that we may not be adding a child to this family until 2013 going on 2014!?  I had NO IDEA that this would be a process that would take 4+ years!

I guess that is why our blog title is about our JOURNEY.  It is not about a quick 1-year process that ends at the airport where people welcome us home.  It is a life-long, and very difficult journey.  Did we know what we were getting ourselves into?  No.  But we trusted.  We trusted that this is the plan that God had asked us to follow.  So we started the journey, and we are still trusting that He has a reason and a purpose in all of this.  We hope to be the family that a child can call 'home.'  We hope to share love with a child that needs that love and care.

And for God's reason, He picked US to go on this journey.

Even if it is a roller coaster!

A good post to go hand-in-hand with what we are going through, is found on the blog of another adoptive family in the waiting process.  Please read, because it expresses how we feel as well!  Meg and her husband are adopting from Ethiopia.