Hastening the Day

There are very few things adoptive families can do to speed the day when they travel to pick up their child. Most of the time is spent waiting and wondering and learning the hard way to trust in God's wise timing. This week, however, Craig and I reached one of those rare points where the ball was back in our court, so to speak. Believe you me, we did everything in our power to hit that ball back as hard and as quickly as we could.

Last Friday, FFC FedExed us 12 documents. After numerous phone calls and emails with the agency and three other offices, we managed to piece together what we had to do with all the paperwork. (Each state has its own peculiar procedures and woe to you if you don't follow them down to the letter!) We spent the last four days dodging in and out of notary offices, two different county courthouses, the Taiwanese "embassy" (TECO) in New York City, and a bank. We drove a combined total of 10 hours beset by snow half of the time, missed one and a half days of work, spent over $8,000 in preliminary agency, notary, and authentication fees (gas and mileage not included), made photocopies until we were bleary-eyed, and wrangled a restless 4 year-old who was none too happy to be dragged along to many of the destinations.

Anyone who thinks that adopting a child is easier than giving birth has got it all wrong (and this coming from someone who delivered a child painkiller-free). Either way, at the end of the day, we're thankful to report that all of the paperwork was duly signed, sealed, and delivered. Yes, it was a very crazy week, but when we look at the picture of our baby's sweet face, we'd do it all over again in a heartbeat.