Adoption – the journey is stalled

We made the decision to begin the adoption process the week before Christmas 2006.  On Christmas day, we told our parents.  I can remember very clearly how happy my dad was as he felt that the fertility treatments were causing too much physical stress on me.  I am so thankful to the Lord that He led us to that decision and to telling our parents on that day (as originally we were going to wait a couple of months to tell them) because at 12:01 am on December 26^th (that night) my father passed away suddenly.  One of the last conversations we had was about what good parents he felt that Bill and I would be and how happy he was that we had made this decision.  This conversation is one that I cherish and I am glad that our last conversation gave him joy.

Needless to say with the death of my dad, we did not become active in the adoption process until mid 2007 and the initial home study and paperwork took considerably longer than normal as I was dealing with my dad’s estate and helping my mother with her finances during that time.  Originally, I felt that we needed to do an international adoption mainly due to my fear of meeting the birth mother (which is standard these days in domestic adoptions) and my husband agreed. So our home study with our social worker, Karen of Volunteers of America (VOA) ((I need to write a post on that whole process as it is an eye opener)) was for a Vietnamese adoption.  Once again, I was in control of this process not the Lord.  

At the end of 2007,  China started slowing down and becoming more limited on the applicant requirements on the adoption process so many future Adoptive Parents that were in the international pipeline transferred from that program into the Vietnam program.  This increased the lead time from paperwork submission to obtaining a referral quite significantly.  Then, at the beginning of 2008, Vietnam started slowing down the process even further.  This caused me to begin searching the internet for an alternative adoption process.  

Once again…I did not learn from the past and immediately turn this over to the Lord.  I continued to retain ownership and control over our adoption process.  I was praying immature selfish prayers of success without praying the ultimate prayer of submission…”Thy Will Be Done Not Mine.”