Labour of Love

I stood, waiting in the hot, busy Police Headquarters trying to suppress a grin. Inside my heart was beaming, Philippians 4:4 coursing through my brain on a continuous loop. This was the second of a long list of bureaucratic paper stops we would be doing and I was like an excited child in a candy shop…

On 01 September, after a 9 week hiatus, we finally were back ‘on the couch’. It was only our fifth session and we had been told we needed at least 8 so I had already booked two more for the following week. Dennis had called the orphanage a few days prior and was told that as soon as our paperwork was finished we should come to Ethiopia and they would match us with a child. Needless to say we were eager to finish our paperwork!!! The session with Sabine went very well. We discussed how to handle insensitive prying questions, that we are bound to encounter from complete strangers, all the while keeping our child protected from feeling like a circus act or a possession. Afterwards she looked at us and said ok we’re pretty much done! DONE!! Oh my goodness. Then she looked in our file and exclaimed that she didn’t have any paperwork for us. Of course she didn’t! We thought we still had several sessions left and as a few of the documents were date sensitive she had asked us to leave them till the last possible minute. Well now the last possible minute was upon us. Sabine cancelled our next appointment, and asked us to gather all the require documents and bring them to her on the 8th when she would just need 30mins of our time to discuss a few more things and then she could process her report. Oh my goodness. Dennis and I looked at each other. I wanted to scream, jump up and down, do the highland jig (or at least my version of it), instead we just smiled and said “ok”.

So there I was standing in the Police Headquarters, filling in forms, waiting for translations to be made, being fingerprinted and feeling complete joy. It was my form of an ultrasound, that first glimpse of my child. That moment when the dream becomes more of a reality. I could not be happier. Isn’t adoption marvelous?

“ For My thoughts are not your thoughts,

Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD.

“ For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

So are My ways higher than your ways,

And My thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:9-10