Timeline

The past two weeks with our adoption has been going strong with getting all our dossier documents completed. We are now only waiting for our homestudy education to be mailed in tomorrow, our homestudy to be approved and returned so we can get it sent with our dossier. Our agency reviews dossiers on Fridays so hoping to have it all in their hands by Friday, Sept. 17th but more realistically, reviewed on the 24th. Hope to then be on the official waitlist the following week. They do say about 95% of dossiers need revision so hopefully ours will be a-ok when it arrives!

The past two weeks I've also been on our agency's listserv/yahoo group so I get a lot of conversation that is going on in the group. It's exciting to hear it all but hard too. There has been little movement due to the courts closing in Ethiopia in August and Sept. so there are a lot of people anxious about things getting moving again. Moving as in referrals and people moving closer to the top of the list - that #1 spot. There are times when you can be matched with your sweet one without being #1 - just depends on your parameters.

So... being in the listserv has kind of gotten us wanting to move things along at a quick rate because the wait is getting longer. The family who just got on the waitlist for a boy is starting at #62 when a family that we've been following since March started on the waitlist with #36 (they are now #11). The wait used to be 6-9 months for a referral meaning from the time you got on the wait list till you get THE call telling you who your child is. With the courts closing time of year, the number of families that are now using AGCI and the fact that AGCI works with one orphanage (I didn't know this when we signed up and just found out this is common), the wait is now predicted at 12-18 months. I look at our ticker and today is says we've already been on our journey for 5 months, 1 week and 1 day. Now 12-18 more months and probably then some....

Neil and I have been sad thinking it will be longer before we know who our little guy is. Wow - that seems like forever away... but as we will eventually be put on the list and see our number get closer to #1, we will be seeing other children be united with their forever families. While that is definitely something to rejoice about, I always come back to this sense of sadness that with our joy and rejoicing of bringing a child into our lives, someone else had to make that really hard decision for one reason or another and has had a tremendous loss and heavy grief. There is so much to adoption so many don't realize, see or want to acknowledge and that certainly includes us as we continue to grow and learn so much through this experience.

We know God's timing is perfect and we continue to trust that His plan is so much greater than we could ever imagine. Oh yes - easier said than done at times. He's already stirring so much within us so I can only imagine where we will be in 12-18 months time.