Being Thrust Into His Arms



Our literal PAPER TRAIL!

After weeks and months of gathering every document, identification, and authorization form under the sun (and notarizing all of them) we finally sent off a copy of our dossier to our agency for approval. It took a total of 3 months to finish all of it, and we're praying hard that everything is correct and we will get the approval soon to send the actual dossier to it's first location. Here's kind of a rundown of the many travels of our dossier:



Our dossier draft (our baby)



The dossier has to be authenticated (that's fancy for a seal that makes a document legal) at every level: state, federal, and international. That's a lot of stamping and sealing. Once our dossier is approved by our agency, we will send it to the Texas Secretary of State for it to be authenticated at state level. Next destination...Washington DC, where Secretary Hillary Clinton will authenticate our dossier at the national level. Finally, it will travel to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and be authenticated there at the Ethiopian Embassy. After the dossier comes to its final destination, we get put on a waitlist through our agency for a child referral. The waiting time for a referral takes nine months, give or take a few months. We will officially be paper pregnant!

There are no words to describe the excitement and anticipation we have about our adoption being finalized. All you mama's and mama's-to-be will understand when I say, it's just like when FINALLY, that baby bump starts showing and the whole world can see it, and you've never been so proud to have a big belly! It's so surreal that we're at the point that we're at.If you would have told me a year ago that this would be our life, I wouldn't have believed you. God was stirring this in my heart, but it just seemed like EVERYTHING else was going against it. I just couldn't quiet that voice in my head and my heart that was saying, "forget about everything going on and follow me." It was either believe Him and trust Him or choose to take life into our own hands and deal with everything how we thought was best. That life would have been horrible. I would be at a job where I never got see my children grow, watch Stella in her dance class, or be there to untangle or catch Max when our little Master of Disaster got himself into, yet again, another predicament. I would've had a marriage that lacked communication, and had a false foundation that would eventually lead to the romance and love completely finding its way out of our marriage. And, I always would have had this hole in my heart in the shape of our son, that I would have spent the rest of my life trying to fill with everything else in the world. Sure, we would have had much more money, a whole lot more "stuff", with Jordan's love of electronics and my, I'm embarrased to say,addiction to shopping for pretty much anything from groceries to clothes to furniture. But now, I can't imagine going down any other path, serving any other God, or putting my wants for my life over His wants for my life. I do not want to live any other way than to be walking down the path that God has set out in front of me since before I was born.

"Yet you brought me safely from my mother's womb and led me to trust you at my mother's breast. I was thrust into your arms at my birth. You have been MY God from the moment I was born."

Psalm 22:9-10

For those of you who have been lifting up our family in prayer, THANK YOU! Please keep praying for us and our journey. Pray that our dossier will get approved, so we can get on that waitlist. Pray that when we finally get on the waitlist that God will give us patience and that he will take that time to mold our family and put our family to the place we need to be emotionally, spiritually, financially, and physically. Again, we say thank you. 



Our Adoption Headquarters