Adoption Update

Yesterday we got our Letter of Approval (LOA). It's wonderful news, as it gives us a window of travel - should be early September. Thankfully, Matt is home on vacation this week because we have family visiting and he was here to sign and date things. I had to print out a bunch of papers I had filled out for Immigration Services. They had to be signed and dated and overnighted. Things had to be copied and scanned into our computer. Some things had to be photocopies, some had to be originals. It was all very complicated, as government things usually tend to be. It was wonderful timing though, as my lovely brother and sister-in-law took the older two kids out for ice cream and my good friend, also visiting, cleaned the kitchen and swam in the pool with Noah. I had about two hours to get everything done and mailed out before I had to go to class and I just barely squeaked into the room with two minutes to spare.

In the midst of the paper craze, I caught sight of a sentence on Talitha's referral papers describing her status as abandoned and without anyone to care for her. It was one of those professional sentences you would expect to find on a government paper. That's it. That's her - abandoned. A few quick types on a keyboard and her situation is summed up in a bleak and dreary combination of words.

It struck me as quite awful and hot tears pricked my eyes.

Sometimes I get so caught up in this day to day of living that I can't see these big huge amazing things that God is doing in our lives. The endless laundry, the screams of a toddler, the apple slices, the bandaids, the papers in APA format. Often I look back at my life and I can see all these amazing things - some bad, some good. I often just can't see them as they're happening. It just looks like life. But really it's a grand adventure, stitched together with all these little things.

She's out there now, sleeping in a blue metal crib in a row of blue metal cribs in a room full of blue metal cribs. Her life has been stamped and labeled and it's a pretty depressing one. She has no idea we're over here, working and working and working to get her. She doesn't fully realize the gravity of her situation but we do.

Once, a long time again, God worked and worked and worked all things together for my good. He rewrote the sentence of my life. No longer condemned but free.

One day Matt and I will cross out that sentence and sign our names on a piece of paper that states she is no longer labeled abandoned. Her sentence will read that she has found a safe place to land - and she is beloved.