I feel like graduation is a lot like adoption.
You work so hard for four years (some maybe 2 years if you were like me and thought colleges didn't look at grades until junior year...) and then you get into this great college or choose a job, but you're kind of in this..now what? phase.
You know what I'm talking about, where you feel like you should be doing something more because you graduated you're in college or you have a job. It's like, okay I did all this work and...now what?!
I think that's kind of like adoption, you work super hard to get all that paperwork done, you get fingerprinted you have interviews, read books, fill out more paper work, ect, ect, ect (said like "The King and I ;) And then you ship off your dossier and THEN......
Now what?
You wait.
And you wait
And you wait
And you see what God has in store.
When we started our adoption, I prayed for God to use our wait time for something bigger than we ever thought He could.
He totally did
We'll be DTE one year on May 18th, and in just 1 year He showed
-open our eyes to special needs adoption
-widen our age parameters
-and then we found out about a little boy in West Africa who needed a family (in a country I didn't even know existed)
- Blew down mountains to show us that we can adopt two kids, at the same time from totally different countries.
Ok, so if you're in that now what stage I'm gonna tell you exactly what I tell my girls who are about to head off to college and are usually freaking out if not now, in about 6 weeks...
Be open and ready for God to use you in ways you never thought possible.
Be ready to change, change is good, change is necessary.
The "what if" stage can be totally scary, but totally amazing if you let it happen.
Let it happen and see how big God is.
"God will be in control forever." 1 Peter 5:11
AMEN!!! We are not even close to Dossier and it seems like we are going through some of the same amazing learning. When I look back and see that for all intents and purposes we have only been in this hard core for about 3 months (end of February we sent in our application - FINALLY). It gives me such hope for the work that God has prepared for us. Gives me chills, makes me cry, makes me giddy, hyper, and so happy that I laugh out loud.
ReplyDeleteHere's a question for you. How did you get started on the second adoption at the same time? We plan on adopting at least twice if that's in God's plan.
Okay, so our agency allows now (because the wait time for the Ethiopia program has increased) to do what's called a concurrant adoption where you basically go on "hold" don't loose your spot, keep moving up in the line, but can't receive a referral until 6-12 months after our first child is home. We had to apply, and then be approved (but super easy) and then we just go off hold once our social worker gives us the green light :) We didn't plan on adopting at the same time at all, but God had other plans :)
DeleteI've got questions about that second adoption too? please tell us the story and if they will come home at the same time or months apart.
ReplyDeleteHey Laura! So I answered a few of the bigger questions above, but basically our little man from West Africa will come home first (hopefully late summer/ early fall) and then 6-12 months (depending on attachment and bonding and all) we can receive our referral from Ethiopia :) Some agencies allow what's called a concurrant adoption, ours (America World) just opened it up for familes in the Ethiopia program.
DeleteTimely for me, Steph!
ReplyDeletethis was really good for me this morning steph, perfect timing really. thank you for sharing!!
ReplyDelete