It's OK To Feel This Way

So, I am feeling the need for a little honesty time. Not that I have been dishonest, but I do want to share a little bit about what my heart has been feeling over the last few days, mostly because I think it is important to be very transparent during this adoption process so that others who are adopting or contemplating adopting will know that we are not above the hurt and frustration that sometimes accompanies international adoption and that there are going to be things that hurt and frustrate along the way and that it is OK to feel these things.

As you know from our last post, we are at the end of our home study (Praise the Lord!), which is an enormous step. I also mentioned in our last post that the wait time for adopting from Ethiopia has increased. When we began the process, the average wait for a referral (adoption lingo for being matched with your child) was 6-9 months; now, however, the wait has increased to 11-12 months. And if I am 100% honest, this news has really upset me. I know that there will be some people who think, "That's just a few months. What's the big deal?"And it is just a few months, but when you are waiting for your child, your baby, to come home, every day of waiting is forever long. Every day is one more day that your child lives without you and you without them.

I think the reason that this news has shaken me so much is that I was totally mentally ready for the initial time frame. Even if it took the full nine months to be matched, I was ready. That, coupled with timing of this news makes it difficult. What I mean by that is we are on the brink of being a "waiting family," a family who has done all of the paperwork and is now just waiting for a phone call with good news. And right as we are about to enter into our time of waiting, we find out that the wait is going to be longer.

I tried so hard to be strong and just say, "Well, that's international adoption for you!" I tried, but I have failed. Adam and I were apart when we got the email with the updated time frame, and I am sure he was up here in Birmingham thinking, "Please don't let her read it! Please don't let her read it!" I held it together OK-ish until I got back to Adam, and then I let it out. Poor fellow. I cried and cried about how unfair it was (very mature, right?) and about how the timing couldn't be worse and how tired I am of waiting to be a mom. And the truth is, while I know that everything will work out exactly as the Lord intends, I do feel these things right now. I feel like it is unfair, and I feel like the timing is terrible and I am so, so, so incredibly tired of waiting to be a mom. And as I wrestle through these feelings and the random tears in movie theaters, restaurants and our home, I realize that it is OK to feel these things, as long as I don't only ever feel this way.

I believe it is OK for me to be sad right now as long as I remember that all of this is happening in God's perfectly beautiful timing. I believe it is OK for me to be tired of waiting, as long as I remember that I am waiting on the precious child He has planned for us. There have been lots of tears, but I know that there will not only ever be tears. There will be rejoicing. There will be love. There will be laughing. There will be a beautiful child sleeping in the room I am sitting in right now. Just not yet.

So if you are adopting and waiting on your precious one, or thinking about adopting, or really just waiting on anything that you feel is loooooooong overdue, please take comfort in the profound truth that absolutely nothing in this world takes place outside of the Lord's perfect timing. He has not forgotten about me, and He has most certainly not forgotten about you.

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end." Ecclesiastes 3:11

Love,
Baylor