Is this it??

It's the moment we've all been waiting for.  Our hearing!  Thursday afternoon, Lord-willing, we'll be meeting with the judge and will officially be assigned our baby boy.  I have no idea what that might look like- does she (the judge) ask us questions about why we want to adopt, what it means to parent an adopted child, etc...? I'm assuming there won't be any hang-ups there.  After the meeting, we will (hopefully) go the orphanage to meet our little guy!  Even though our hearing has been confirmed, there have been so many disappointments and unexpected interruptions that I'm having a hard time believing that it's really going to happen.  I initially felt elation, relief and a little nervousness and now I just feel like I'm waiting for the bubble to pop.  But, I'm going to try to prepare, to celebrate, to believe our moment has come and then really go crazy once we have him in our arms.  Thanks for praying.  We can't wait to plaster some pics of our new son all over cyber space and introduce you all.

Crushed.

It's hard to put into words all that I'm feeling right now.  I mostly feel emotionally and physically spent...a bit fuzzy and incoherent.  We had a tentative date with the judge set up for Friday, which means we would have met our son that day.  His paperwork has been done for almost 2 weeks now and we are just waiting for the judge to give us the appointment to officially accept him.  After spending all week hoping it was going to work, but trying to not get too excited, our lawyer called yesterday to tell us we weren't going to be able to do it this week.  It was a blow- another one.  I can't say that the excitement and anticipation followed by crushing disappointment gets any easier.  If anything, I find myself getting more distrusting, more angry, more hopeless as time goes on.  And then, I feel guilty for that.  As though I've forgotten that the Lord continues to be in control.  Proverbs tells us, "hope deferred makes the heart sick."  I have lived this verse for too many months to count and although the Lord continues to pick me up and give me hope again, my heart has been sicker than I know how to deal with.  I just don't feel like I have the strength to keep going.

In all this, I know God is at work.  Mostly in me.  I know He's doing something in the adoption process as well, but I think the main work is in my heart.  I was reminded this morning of the beating and crushing Jesus Christ took on the day He was crucified.  I remember the scripture saying He was perfected through suffering.  My soul feels like it's being flogged and I know through that I am being perfected as well.  I am learning to submit my will to God's perfect will.  My flesh is fighting it and I think that's why it hurts so much.  But I have hope that I will come out on the other side looking a little more like Jesus.  And, hopefully with a baby, too.

One step forward!

The lawyer called me (maybe the first time she's ever initiated contact) on Thursday as we were driving home from here:

Hot springs.  Don't be jealous.

And she wanted to know if we could come in to sign a document on Monday morning.  I just thought, "Wow!  She called me!"  Signal was bad, so I called her back that evening and she informed us that our baby's paperwork has finally been finished!  BEFORE she said it would!  Again, wow!  I can't believe something actually happened before they thought it might, not several months after.  We were very happy, to say the least.

So, Jubilee and I hop in a cab after dropping Natty off at school this morning:

In the taxi.  Jubilee loves public transportation.


And we take off to try to make it to the judge's office in morning rush hour.  A wild drive all around the city deposits us there before the lawyer:

Selfie: Waiting for lawyer.

So, we wait.  We're getting good at this.  Then the lawyer comes, we drop off our papers requesting a court date, they get stamped and we leave.  I ask the lawyer what happens next.  She explains some procedure that I understand about 25% of and come away with the general idea that we do some more waiting until they assign us a date.  However, I think that once we have our date with the judge, we get assigned our baby and can go see him almost immediately!  So, the lawyer is saying we should have a date by next week!  Woohoo!  I'm still not totally letting myself get excited yet, because we've run into so many delays that it's hard to believe it will come to an end "this quickly".  But, I think we are getting very close.  I am very thankful!