Today I Want to Quit

When China said no to us the first time, we thought maybe it was a door closing on adoption.  We almost quit thinking about adoption then.

Then Kyrgyzstan opened up, and we felt we were supposed to walk down that road.  We busted our rear ends completed a home study and submitted a dossier in 3 months. Then we waited and waited and waited. Then it felt like the floor was falling out in Kyrgyzstan (one consolation in all this is there still isn’t much movement there).  That would have been a good time to quit.

Instead China had changed it’s laws, making it possible to switch there (at a several thousand dollar loss, but whatevs).  So we switched and basically started the whole process again.

I thought it would fly by, because we totally busted out a home study and dossier in three months, and now we just had to re-up our home study.  Ain’t no thang.

False.

China’s dossier is literally three times as hard, because there are three times as many steps.  Plus the super, not at all awesome thing we learned was that our immigration (USCIS) approval for a non-Hague country, could not just be renewed or transferred, it had to be completely redone (I-600a/I-800a).  Which meant we had to do the whole 6-9 week waiting process again.  And the almost $1000 check. Which meant I needed my renewed home study like yesterday (you have to submit a notarized original of your home study to get immigration approval).

It’s been over a month since we transferred, and I still don’t have my home study.  This morning I just found out that it will be at least another week and a half before I get our home study. Not because it’s not done.

Going in I thought we could submit our dossier by the end of October at the latest.  Instead, the absolute soonest we could submit now would be the end of November.  It’s likely going to effect holiday plans as well, potentially coming the week of Thanksgiving, and us needing to expedite it to the Chinese consulate for review.

Today I feel like quitting.

The amount of spiritual attack we have been under the last month is almost comical at this point.  My response to just about everything is “of course that broke” “of course that happened”. I feel like I am constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, or the next phone call with bad news.  There is a constant weight on me, I can’t even explain. It’s been a dark and hard time.

I have been begging God to show up.  To make His presence known.  I have been pleading all week long to just let us be able to submit USCIS this week. To expedite it’s review, to help things move quickly.  And this morning I woke up to the email that it’s going to be delayed a week and a half.

The only thing that’s keeping us in this adoption game right now is a little girl on the other side of the world that needs us.  And Jesus.  It all feels like it’s too hard, and too much.  If adoption were as simple as paperwork, that would be great.  Maybe for some people it is.  But as we have walked through all of this, I’ve felt that it is literally a fight to bring life to a human being who would not otherwise have it.  It’s love in a world of pain.  It’s redemption, and lightness in darkness. And as we attempt to play a part in that, we can very tangibly sense the darkness pushing back.  I’m tired of the fight.  I’m tired of feeling like I can’t see the light anymore and am just in a sea of darkness.

I hope that through all this yuck, I’ll at least be able to convey to my daughter how hard we fought for her, because it has certainly has been a fight.

We are going to keep pressing on, and putting one foot in front of the other.  Because that’s what faith is, and what it does.  But today, I kind of wish quitting was an option.