16 Months

Not much to say other than things are slow. I think there's been 1 referral in two months...so even if we are in the top 5 that could mean tomorrow or 10 months from now. I just read this little excerpt and I sooooo wish we had read this when we started this process (not that we would have changed our minds, but that maybe we could just expect it to take 5 million years longer than we planned):

'About the long wait and many frustrations that adoptive parents encounter on the journey... “Oh my, I can speak to this. First, forget whatever timeline you were given at the beginning. Forget you ever heard that. Put that in the trash can. Adoption will change, shift, slow down, hit snags, be weird, be difficult, take longer than you think, take longer than you can stand. This will happen. This is the normal thing. When someone gives you a timeline, say, “Thank you for that cute little sentence. Flush.” Potential adopters, let me tell you this: Get your “YES” straight at the very beginning. Decide on it. Roll around in it. Put it on the table and shellack it. Because you cannot let every delay and snag derail your certainty about adoption. When you say YES, you are saying YES to enter the suffering of the orphan, and that suffering includes WAITING FOR YOU TO GET TO THEM. I promise you, their suffering is worse than yours. We say YES to the tears, YES to the longing, YES to the maddening process, YES to the money, YES to hope, YES to the screaming frustration of it all, YES to going the distance through every unforeseen discouragement and delay. Do not imagine that something outside of “your perfect plan” means you heard God wrong. There is NO perfect adoption. EVERY adoption has snags. We Americans invented the “show me a sign” or “this is a sign” or “this must mean God is closing a door” or “God must not be in this because it is hard,” but all that is garbage. You know what’s hard? Being an orphan. They need us to be champions and heroes for them, fighting like hell to get them home. So we will. We may cry and rage and scream and wail in the process, but get them home we will.”' written by: Jen Hatmaker