It's Ruff!

This past week has been very difficult. We were told two months ago that it would not be long until a referral. Silly me! I thought that might mean that we would have a referral during our trip to Europe. No...okay, maybe we would have a referral when we arrived home. No...maybe by Easter? By what would have been my grandfather's 101st birthday? By Mother's Day? By the end of the school year? I get myself into trouble by having certain expectations of what life will be like, and these often differ from God's plan. I thought of how great it would be to find out about our child while we were on our trip with my family! Okay, how great it would be for Easter. Okay, at least by Mother's Day. Well, Mother's Day is a week from tomorrow, and I am not expecting any news. I would love to hear something by the time Ellie gets out of school for the summer so that we can tell her class about becoming a big sister. We have a book to read about a child who becomes a big sister through adoption to help explain it to the kids. I really would love to tell the kids about our child and about India, and send each one home with a little card with the information to tell the parents. Tonight it just seemed like we are never going to hear anything, and all of the emotions I have stored up for so long came flooding out in tears. Chip and Ellie had already gone upstairs for the bedtime routine, but they quickly came down when they heard me crying. After we talked about it all, Chip said, "I wonder what Jack would say." Ellie, without missing a beat said,"He would say, 'It's ruff, ruff!'" Whew! Did she ever hit the nail on the head with that one. :) It sure is rough. It will be even harder after we do hear about our child because right now it has been a theoretical child whom we have been hoping to adopt. This child will soon have a real name and face. How much harder will it be when we have to wait for a year or more to have approval from CARA (the Indian organization that approves all adoptions) and get into the court system? Until these happen, however, I will try to take one day at a time and not get ahead of myself. God does has His plan. Do I trust Him? He has shown himself in the small miracles like the news we received on Good Friday after my sister had spent hours on a walk the night before to pray for us to hear something soon. Just yesterday I was talking with my sister about how difficult it is to wait during this time and not have other adoptive families whom we know well to talk with about our frustrations. Today we received an email from a family in the adoption group at our new church who emailed saying they would like to meet us in person. They spoke about the difficulty of waiting for their referral. God knew I needed this right now, and He provided just what I needed for today. I hope I can come back and remember this the next time life gets "ruff!"