But I Did It Perfectly...

So by now you probably know that I am experiencing a bit of frustration in the adoption world this week. Our fingerprints have expired. Boo. And we are now at a place where nothing can be done until our prints are renewed. We are waiting for our appointment letters to come in the mail so that we can go get reprinted. Each letter has a barcode that is unique to our case, and so we cannot go without them. Believe me; I considered it.

The most frustrating part of it all is that our prints expired SIX DAYS before we needed our approval issued. And now we are stuck. Grrrrrr. For the last four days, I have STALKED my postman and the mailbox, praying that our letters would come, but they have yet to arrive.

And I have been blaming myself.

For three years, I have tracked every single piece of paper that pertained to our adoption. I have met deadlines, gotten originals of all of our documents, made it to appointments on time, checked and re-checked everything. And I did it successfully. But now, in the eleventh hour, I dropped the ball. I somehow missed that our prints were expiring, so my lapse is causing this delay. And as result of this, I have found myself feeling a lot of things over the last few days. I have been sad, upset, angry, impatient, unfocused, but most of all, I have felt indignant. I have thought about all the paperwork we have completed over the last three years, coupled with where we are now, and I have said to myself…

"But I did it perfectly."

And God stops me right there. He stops me and reminds me that this process, bringing this sweet, beautiful boy into our family, does not hinge on me or the perfection I might think I have achieved. I cannot do enough fast enough to get him home. It doesn't depend on me at all. This boy becoming my son rests solely in God's hands. Color me humbled.

And I am starting to think that is why our print cards have not arrived yet. I am starting to think that God is, once again, using this journey to my son to reveal something to me about Himself. Namely, His sufficiency and my lack of it.

Maybe you are there tonight, too. Maybe you have worked hard and done all the right things for a VERY long time, only to get so close to the end and feel like you have hit a brick wall. I'm right there with you, friend. But there is purpose in this, too. God is still at work, molding us into who we need to be for what lies ahead. Hang on.

Love,
Baylor