Probably not March

Yesterday, we marked off nine months of waiting since we completed and sent all the necessary adoption paperwork to Ethiopia. Back in June of '08, the estimated wait time for a young sibling group was 3-7 months. Obviously, wait times have increased since then. As we enter into our tenth month of waiting, we are so eager for that day our caseworker from America World, Terra, will call and say, "We have your referral." How we long for her to tell us about two special children halfway around the world! Though their stories of loss will break our hearts, I'm sure, we believe that God is a wonderful Redeemer who can take the broken things of this world and make them new and whole and glorious. We long to see the big, brown eyes and curly hair, now unfamiliar; we will memorize every detail of those pictures in the weeks and months before court, making what we do not know now part of who we will be in times to come. We will dream and speculate about how all four of our children will interact. We will decide what we need to keep of what we have saved and try to figure out what we might need to still get. Our love, now focussed on a vague idea in our minds, will tightly focus and yet somehow expand when we have names and faces at which we can direct it.

Unfortunately, it looks like our wait for that special, long-anticipated day of first contact is still a little ways off. We did receive an email from Terra this week that sensitively clarified that our agency is not yet processing a referral specifically for our family. While this news was disheartening in one sense, it did keep our hearts from racing every time the phone rang, put our minds at rest from the constant pressure of high expectation, allows us to reframe our assumptions and rest for a time.

I found an old hymn that has provided helpful truth on which to let my mind dwell:
Not so in haste my heart!
Have faith in God, and wait;
Although He linger long,
He never comes too late.

He never comes too late;
He knoweth what is best;
Vex not thyself in vain;
Until He cometh, rest.

Until He cometh, rest,
Nor grudge the hours that roll;
The feet that wait for God
Are soonest at the goal.

Are soonest at the goal
That is not gained with speed;
Then hold thee still, my heart,
For I shall wait His lead.

Maybe April will be the month for us to receive that for which we continue to wait??!!??