This adoption has changed me. It has stretched me and pulled
me in ways that I never imagined. It has on many occasions brought me to my
knees in tears, and it has lifted me up with amazing joy. It has shown me at
times the most ugly part of human nature as people have both attacked our
choice to adopt and disagreed with our choice to adopt internationally.
However, those negative voices have been silenced by all of the amazing friends
and family and other kind people who have supported us on our journey to adopt
Lucy. I choose to focus on this ever surprising and wonderful side of our
adoption. I choose to focus on all the people that love us and have made
sacrifices to help us bring our daughter home. And, I wanted to take this
opportunity to say thank you from our family to yours. You have all blessed us
so much! Thank you for the words of encouragement , the donations, and
especially your prayers.
Our Facebook Event, 150 Envelopes for Lucy, is doing so
well, and we are hopeful that all of our envelopes will be taken by the end of
the event May 9th, which is the date when the remainder of our fees
will be due. The event is doing so well because so many loving and giving
people have decided to step out in faith and make sacrifices to support our
family, in the same way that Rob and I stepped out in faith to pursue Lucy’s
adoption. And, we are grateful, thankful, and forever blessed by every single
person who has done so.
We are also blessed by the sisters in Lucy’s orphanage who
are taking amazingly good care of our little girl and who are telling her daily
that mami and babi (mommy and daddy) are coming. We have been told that as soon
as our paperwork is in Albania and we have a court date that the sisters will
begin sharing our pictures with her daily and reaffirming to her that we are
her parents and that we are coming soon.
For those of you who have been in this process before with another
country, you know how amazing that is! That
sort of preparation to help the child before the parents arrive is typically
not the norm for international adoption, but I am so glad that it is for Lucy.
Speaking of our paperwork being in Albania, Rob and I should
finish our dossier on Monday! We are hopeful that our paperwork will be sent to
Albania within the next few weeks after our agency has reviewed it one last
time. Wow! Even, I can’t believe how quickly all of this has come together. The
last week has seen a flourish of activity in our house as we finished up the
remainder of the documents required for the dossier. The kids had their
medicals updated including an updated TB screen, Rob’s apostilled birth
certificate came back from Illinois, Julia and I drove three hours to Knoxville
to have our home study and a few other documents certified at the county clerk’s
office, and Julia and I rounded out the week by having eight more of our documents
certified at another county clerk’s office closer to home. Monday, we will go
get the remainder of our documents certified at yet another county clerk’s
office and then it is off to the Secretary of State’s office for apostilles for
all of the documents. After that, it is a simple matter of making copies of
everything and sending it all by FedEx to our agency.
