PRAYER REQUEST

Please pray for Anita M. and her two trainees who are currently (right now) looking at our file at USCIS.  100 days have gone by since USCIS entered our paperwork into their system--107 since it arrived at their office--and when I called today to check up on things, Anita, the officer assigned to our case, opened our file for the first time.  She was sweet and polite and very candid with me; she gave me 10 minutes of her time on the phone and answered several questions.  She also volunteered the information that she is training two "mentees" who will be learning how to evaluate cases by evaluating our case.  Trainees!  She asked me to give her another week and a half to finish evaluating our case.  

She glanced at our file while we were on the phone and noticed something that might turn out to be a problem with our homestudy and she has promised to call me on my cell phone by tomorrow to let me know if we will have to have our social worker do another home visit and amend our homestudy again.  Everything I've read says that we should not have to do that, but she seemed iffy about it.  So, she'll tell me tomorrow if I have to endure more interactions with our social worker.

I can be honest in this blog, right?  This is the very first moment that I have felt the impatience, frustration, exasperation and exhaustion that so many adoptive families have told me were recurring themes of their adoption process.  It has been just about two and a half years since we started this process by choosing an adoption agency, and something about my conversation with Anita M. today walloped my spirit somethin' fierce.  I'm trying not to wallow in self-pity here, but the truth is that if it really takes her another week and a half to finish reviewing our case--even if it's approved after that--we probably won't get the official letter until the week before Christmas, leaving it nearly impossible to notarize, certify and legalize it before the first of the year.  Meanwhile, another Christmas goes by during which our children do not know that they have parents waiting for them with all their hearts.

There have been headaches, time crunches, and days during which I felt like a chicken running around with its head cut off, but there have been few tears shed about this process so far--it's a process--anyone can wait one more day, right?  Well, at the moment I can't muster up any hopeful sayings to re-inflate my sagging heart.  

So, pray.  Please pray as you read this that Anita M. and her trainees will catch the vision that their work is worth far more than paper-pushing.  Pray that they are motivated by the true fact that in their hands they hold the hopes and dreams and futures of children and families.  Pray that the true gravity of what they do each day will motivate them to work quickly and with purpose for all the families whose lives sit in manila folders on their desks.  And pray that after reading our papers carefully, they will be able to confidently approve our file.

I haven't forgotten the purpose of this blog.  I am writing even these tearful words and pleas for prayers for them.  They need to know that our hearts break each day we're not with them and that every delay feels like an eternity to us and that our family is not complete until they are in it.  I think it's good that they see the hurt along with the hope.