Joy

The day finally arrived! One year, two months, three weeks and six days since we started waiting for our referral call, we got it!

I can say with full joy, that you really can only imagine how very excited I am, that we are adopting a beautiful ten month old girl from Ghana! I unfortunately cannot go into much details about her since we are not legally her parents yet, and you don't get to see her beautiful expressive eyes or her cute little head of hair, but I can share with the world that we are going to be parents! Of a girl! A young girl! Even if we take a year to get her home (hopefully, prayerfully sooner) she will still be under 2 when we get her home.

I had the amazing opportunity to share with our parents yesterday, and I loved the way we decided to do it- we printed out her picture, and then drove over to their houses and just showed up, and gave them the picture and told them her name, and shared the news! So fun!

The hardest thing is that we actually first heard about this precious one four weeks ago, but due to some issues, couldn't be officially referred her, even as it looked like she was going to be ours. So for four long, painful weeks, we had to keep quiet about it because it could still fall apart at that time.

I have said before how this blog is not only a record of life, but also a way for me to express my feelings, and writing is a huge cathartic activity. But since I obviously couldn't share on my blog yet, I started a word document for me to be able to write about the chance to adopt this girl. Below are a few quotes from that document, to share my range of emotions during that time.

In one of the first e-mails regarding this girl, our coordinator said that she would likely be made available to us-
 

Likely, she said likely! Dealing with might and probably and “soon” gets really tiresome after more than a year and a half of starting this long road, so to hear a likely! Amazing feeling. Amazing to think that I can think in terms of baby, amazing to contemplate the ramifications for work, amazing to have a face, and a name!...

If we can get her home soon enough, she can learn English as a young child at the same time that American kids are learning English!

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How awesome is it that she is from the same organization that we already sent our dossier too! It has to be as God intended, there just isn’t any other way that it could work out so well.

It is soooooo hard to not start calling everyone that I have ever spoken to about our adoption and tell them about what is LIKELY! LIKELY! That is such a nice word. Blake doesn’t even want me to tell our parents yet, because there are a lot of unknowns still, and it is better to wait until it is for sure, but Wow. Just WOW.

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Then the waiting for more information from our coordinator started to feel like forever, and here are a few of my thoughts from that hard time of waiting for the documents/ referral.

8/1 I’m losing it. I have become beyond paranoid and obsessive about checking my e-mail. Every single e-mail gets my hopes up that it is any word from her. I desperately need to hang out with Erin and kiddos today just to get my mind off checking it every few minutes. Seriously… every few MINUTES! When I can finally pull myself together enough to do something else, like feed the dogs, I follow it with checking.

(e-mail check)...

Blake is coming around, and indulges me as I talk about hair, and what we’ll need, and how it will affect our lives, but I think he is more nervous than excited, and that again, doesn’t help me stay excited.

I do keep looking at the picture we have, but I think I have memorized the little face, and wish that I could have more pictures, especially with her smiling. Right now her expression is more like a surprised look.

(e-mail check)

If I can’t make it a week, how do I expect to last the however long it takes for us to finally get her home? My hope is that once it is for sure, I can fully indulge in room planning and registries, and pinning what I want for her. Sigh. I should do something…anything…is Erin here yet?

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I had a few conversations with my amazing coordinator during that time, but her hands were tied as she was also waiting for information and documents from Ghana.

Here are my thoughts a few weeks in-

8/15 If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, does it make a sound? If you have exciting news, and no one to tell it, is it as exciting?

Tomorrow will mark three weeks since we heard about ____. Three weeks since we had a picture and a name and an age of a child that is “likely” to be ours, and yet I haven’t said anything on my blog, or anything to family, and when people ask about the adoption, I still have to say that we are just waiting, which is true. But the waiting is different than the waiting that we had before three weeks ago.

That waiting was abstract, where we weren’t even sure what we were waiting for. This waiting is like we are waiting for a shimmering image to become solid. But there is an image, a shape that we expect to become apparent. Really, either way, since we are open to her medical needs, it seems to be just a matter of time. More time waiting.

Meanwhile, while my excitement should be building, without the ability to tell people, it seems to calmed, gone down to a low simmer. It is still there, and I know that once I am free to share it will boil over, but for now, it is waiting.

We have a relatively bigger family weekend coming up, and yet, I will have to keep all this news under cover. At least I can rest somewhat easy knowing that I am not lying when I tell them that we are still waiting for a referral call.

For all of the likely that this is, we DON’T have that referral yet. The main reason we aren’t sharing is that until the referral, it really isn’t certain. Big sigh, I really want news soon.

On Wednesday this week, I had the opportunity to write an e-mail to our Ghana contact though our coordinator who could make this a reality, after I expressed to our coordinator that I wished I could just talk to him, and share our story and how we have been waiting. It seemed to have done the trick, because yesterday, August 23rd, 2012, we got the call from our coordinator with our referral!

We are still a long ways from getting her home, and there are still lots of hoops to jump through, but now it is hoops, extensions, updates and everything with a name, a face, a child and a specific little girl that we will be doing everything for, and that makes it all worth it. 

Next step, as I understand it, is a court date (still 1 or more months away), that we may or may not have to be at, but that will make us LEGALLY her parents. Huge. Awesome. Amazing. So very exciting! So glad to be able to share with all of you, many who have been following our story to become parents since 2009! We have a referral! (Happy dance!)