This adoption has changed me

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 9^th, 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.

My heart is in my throat with excitement at how close we are to seeing our daughter for the first time and finally holding her in our arms. And, we definitely could not have gotten this far without your help.  Faleminderit! (Thank you!)