Silence

Silence, deafening silence.  That is the stage we are at in our adoption right now.   Our paperwork was officially submitted to the Haitian governing body of adoptions on February 4th.     Based on all the educated guesses, it is expected that we will have NO updates at all on our adoption for the next 6 to 9 months.   It is such a dramatic change from the steps we just finished where we were constantly doing something to move the adoption forward.  Now there is no busy work for us to be doing.  Instead, we are in a time of prayer; prayer for our daughter, prayer for our hearts to be knitted together despite the distance, prayer for trust in the process, prayer for files to be expedited, prayer to be surprised by our file processing faster than expected. 

We get the question so often of "Why does it take so long".  I don't really have an answer for that question, only my guesses as to why the process takes so long.  During this phase we are in all of our paperwork should be being reviewed by Haitian government to ensure we check all their boxes.  In addition, they are also ensuring that our girl is truly in fact an orphan and therefore adoptable.   Under the Haitian laws we or our agency are not allowed to be informed at all on how the process is moving along in our daughters file.   We are just waiting for a phone call that could be anywhere between 6 to 9 months away, and possibly +/- that time frame as well, where we are told our file has been approved and we have a pending official referral. At which time we will then immediately head down to Haiti for a 2 week socialization period which should then finalize the official referral of our child.  

So in the meantime we wait, sometimes patiently, sometimes not.  Some days are easy and we are just going through normal life, and some days feel so hard to be away and to know that there is still so much more that needs to happen before our family can finally come together.  

What I will say is we continue to feel so incredibly grateful for the support we receive.  We know and feel that our family and this adoption are continuously being supported in prayer.   So many of you regularly ask us how the process is going, where we are at, and other questions....which means so much to us as we feel you are asking because you do care.   We don't always have answers to the questions as with international adoptions sometimes you just have to trust the process and have to let go of the control of knowing the details of each step (which is hard for me), but we love when you ask.  

I/we are praying that we will be surprised by how fast our file is processed. There are cases that go much faster than expected, so we pray that our case too will be one of those that surprises everyone.