little frustrations

I have begun to dread seeing emails in my inbox from our adoption agency. It is always another thing that we have to fix, change the date on, re-notarize, rewrite or just something completely new they need from us. I feel like this home study process...which could have taken a month....has been drug out in an unbelievable way. Every time I open an email I hear myself audibly say, "seriously?!" Which is usually followed up by tears of frustration. We were told by our home study agency that we were finished. They billed us and we were done. We were just waiting on the confirmation from our adoption agency that it had been approved. I have learned to stop expecting to meet time frames. It is so hard to get an email saying we have to re- notarize because the date the doctor wrote and the date the notary wrote were different. It is hard to sit in a doctors office for an hour for a doctor to sign a paper, only to have to leave and wait ten more days to make it happen. It's hard to do all these seemingly pointless and mindless things when there are orphans WAITING ON PARENTS! Sometimes I just want to throw in the towel and push the truths of these orphans to the back of my mind and pretend they aren't there. It would be so much easier. My emotions wouldn't go up and down every ten minutes. I wouldn't spend hours, months even, doing paperwork and running all over the state just for someone to spend ten seconds to sign their name to a paper.

 But the truth is: My little girl is already in my heart even though I don't yet know her. My heart is way too wrapped up in this to stop now. God has called us to this and has every intention of following through with it. God broke our hearts for these Ethiopian children and even though it is emotionally wearing (even this early on in the game) there is a plan and a purpose for this. We must keep trusting and pushing through the frustrations. Please pray with us that things would go more smoothly. That we would get better at doing this paper work junk and understanding all of the requirements expected of us. And that God would bring our little girl home....sooner than later!