5 Weeks....and STILL Waiting!

BUMMER! I just spoke with someone in the National Benefits Center, and she could not give me much more information about our I171-H form beyond, "It looks like your case has been assigned an officer, and your paperwork is sitting on her desk waiting to be reviewed by her." This woman was kind and all, but her next comment was a bit frustrating for me, especially when she found it necessary to repeat it a few more times in our conversation. She kept saying, "In the big picture, it really hasn't been sitting at her desk very long (3-4 weeks)." Yeah, "in the big picture"......this woman has obviously not lived in the adoption world, where every day.....every WEEK counts!!!!

She may be right, in the grand scheme of things (aka, OUTSIDE of the adoption world), waiting FIVE weeks and still having no sign of that one piece of paper that gives us our government's approval to adopt internationally, may not seem that long. But when one week could possibly mean one more month of waiting for a referral, FIVE weeks (PLUS) seems like an excruciatingly LONG time! Aaaargh!!!!

As excited as we were to get our biometrics done a few weeks before our appointment time, it appears as though that did not help expedite the process in any way. Sooooooooo......we sit.....and continue to wait.........and continue to hound our postman............

I just SO desire to have all of our paperwork sent over to Ethiopia (DTE...Dossier to Ethiopia) so that our "real" waiting can begin! At least THAT waiting will feel like each day of waiting is taking us one day closer to our son! Ugh!

As a reminder (to me more than you I suppose), God knows all of the details and timing necessary to bring us to our son. Even though we do not see these details nor understand our hold-ups, He does. I guess that is all that really matters. Now, if you could just pray that I can continue to lean into God and trust that He is overseeing ALL, and that He will help remove this burdensome feeling that we are going to "miss out" on our son, that would be GREAT! {huge sigh} Jeff is stellar at trusting God with all this timing stuff. I need to be better at it.