Passport Approved!

(Greg here)
We learned yesterday that Sneha's passport was approved. For whatever reason, VCT is not permitted to go pick it up in person but must wait for it to be mailed. Apparently this passport office is notorious for letting things sit around before mailing them and the passport is not expected to arrive for about 10 days. We are unsure if that is business days or straight days. We are not yet able to make any concrete plans until that passport is in hand. Again, we are not sure exactly why, but it seems to have something to do with verifying the name they put on the passport to ensure that other documentation exactly matches. I can understand that. Our best guess for travel dates is somewhere around the second or third week of March.

It is strange. Now that we are this close, I suddenly feel completely unprepared. The parenting part seems doable, but for some reason the getting prepared for the actual trip seems awfully challenging. We have had suitcases out for awhile, slowly filling them with things that we want to take. There is just so much to prepare. There is a certain quality to myself that when things reach a certain level, I get to feeling pretty jittery inside and bogged down by thoughts that the things won't be accomplished. Then, stupidly, I have a tendency to spin in space rather than forging ahead and knocking things out one at a time. True, soon enough I get to the knocking things out. I generally am a pretty organized guy. But, I despise the time I spend spinning in my head. I can feel that spinning beginning to slowly whirl.

We are hoping that our travel dates easily allow for us to arrive several days ahead of schedule so we can see as much of her area as possible to gather as much of a "history" for her as possible. What we don't want is to have to make a decision between delaying our getting her for a few days to amass the history, or skipping the history to get her absolutely as soon as possible. At quick pass, different readers may come to a quick decision on what they would do. It does take some thought though and careful consideration yields that the decision is not as easy as would first seem whichever side of the fence you sit on. So, we hope the decision is made for us such that we can naturally arrive earlier without us having to make a possible decision to delay getting her for a few days. To take her with us on a history gathering tour is not something we want to do as the potential to arouse unwanted feelings is pretty high.

I tell you...to international business travelers, our fretting must seem a bit ridiculous. But to a guy who has only been west of the Mississippi twice in his lifetime, packing up a family to go to India for two weeks is a bit daunting.

Numbers

Random thoughts I have been having:

I have been praying for this child for 26% of her life. I have known about her for 415 days and have thought of her and lifted her up each and every one of those days.

This 415 days is less than 3% of my lifetime. Wow. If this process seems to be taking forever for me, what must it seem like for her? I pray that someday she will understand the ache in our hearts at the long wait.

We should be receiving our renewed I800a this week. Maybe it is even in today's mail. Her passport is still being processed and will hopefully come sooner than later. I trust in God's timing, but it doesn't mean that I like it. I know that He sees the tapestry of my life and of her life from above and sees the picture that is being woven. I am underneath staring at the threads, not understanding the image that is forming. I trust Him. I give Him my impatience.

It is hard for me to see people who started their adoption process after we did receiving their children before we do. The inner child in me is jumping up and down and shouting, "No fair! I was here first!" I do not begrudge anyone their success. My heart rejoices when any child is received by their forever family. Yet the inner child inside is still verging on a tantrum. I trust. His timing is the right timing.

We are working on being ready to receive her. We have a bed for her next to ours. We have her clothes washed and ready. We have a soft, fuzzy blankie ready. We have a toothbrush, and a coat, and a booster seat. Her car seat is ready to go into the van. We have a Bitty Baby waiting for her in the living room. We have suitcases in the family room collecting things to take. We are ready. Now we just need for the bureaucrats to finish their jobs and say, "Come."

Now a treat: photos of her :)

What I have learned in the last 10 minutes

When growing up, my brother had a few favorite things he used to say to me. I never appreciated them much, but a few of those things have some relevance now. There were times when I would say something like, "I didn't think that it would turn out that way", or something else like "I thought it wouldn't matter". Except I often didn't get the whole thing out. Pretty often I would start with, "I didn't think..." and he would sternly interrupt with "THAT'S RIGHT. YOU DIDN'T THINK." Or I would start to say, "I thought..." and he would angrily interrupt with "YOU THOUGHT, AND YOU THOUGHT WRONG." I was reminded of this in the past few minutes while praying. I made several statements to God like, "I just don't see how this helps anything." or "I just don't see how this helps her out." or "I just don't see what the point of delaying this even further is." Unlike my brother's stern interruptions, God gently interrupted me with "You're right Greg. You just don't see." He then proceeded to remind me of a few things.

Without going into details, the past two weeks have been unlike any two weeks since Elijah arrived home. It has been positively amazing. Not a day has gone by in the past two weeks that Maren and I haven't thought about the unbelievable difference in our son. I said today that it was like we had a new son. She wondered out loud if we have ever experienced him like this. I was also reminded that she and I are learning some new things about parenting an adopted child and are actively improving our skills. Neither of those things would have happened if we had been able to travel sooner. My mother-in-law wondered several weeks ago if part of the delay wasn't related to Elijah in some way and helping him get to where he needed to be. It seems that this could be spot-on.

I was also made aware in the past ten minutes that our desire to bring Sneha home sooner has some elements of selfishness interwoven into the genuine desire to start her in her family as soon as possible. These are going to be hard to tease out, but I want it to happen.

I was also reminded in the past ten minutes that even though I may not want to grow sometimes, it is for my benefit that it happens. For the 10,000th time, I am trying to allow myself to be transformed. To paraphrase a seeker of God, "Lord, I want to grow. Help my desire to stagnate."

Disappointing news

We learned a little bit ago that the past six weeks have essentially been for nothing. We thought we were waiting for the passport to be issued based on information shared with us near Christmas. We just learned that yesterday they were able to file for her passport. We have asked to have some clarification since we were told this happened the day after we received written guardianship. We were just told the passport should come in 2-6 weeks, but again, that was what we were told in December. On top of this frustration, our updated fingerprints have not yet come back either which usually would have happened by now. Each day that goes by there suggests that there will be a longer delay in the future as they may request additional paperwork to be completed.

We are trying to stay aware that we see one very tiny slice of this whole thing and that our Lord sees the whole picture. It is a challenging and growth-inducing perspective. I must admit that I don't always feel like growing.