When she lived here, my friend -Ginger- and I used to joke about the fact that Wednesdays tend to be pretty crappy days for me. In fact, if ONE day out of the week is gonna be bad, it probably won't be Monday. Nope, it's going to be Wednesday. In fact, I should've probably learned, long ago, to just go ahead & stay in bed on Wednesdays.

But no. I chance it. Every Wednesday, I get up, determined that the day is going to be good. And sometimes it is. But a lot of times, it just plain ole stinks. Some days, I make it 3/4 of the way through the day...and then wham! something happens that just sorta ruins the day for me.

Take today for instance. Good day. I was tired, from a really strange dream I had last night, but for the most part, it was good. This afternoon, I received a call, saying that I was about to receive our long-awaited court petition via email. This, with a list of other docs we have to redo b/c they will be expiring soon. No big deal. In fact, quite exciting, since I had been lamenting over the location of this court petition!

One of our docs that has to be updated is our home study. Also, no biggie - I called our hs social worker, and we figured that we could have this done in maybe a week's time.

When you get to this point in the adoption process, you (or at least I) start waiting for the other shoe to drop. Things are going well...surely something is going to happen, to mess with things. What could it possibly be?

Melissa -- Why Dare Ask?? Because, you know, you are GOING to get an answer! And on a Wednesday, nonetheless!

The other shoe? An email from the hs sw's supervisor, telling her that we have to have our child abuse/neglect background clearances redone. This could take a few weeks.

I'm upset, but not AT anyone - just frustrated with the process. I KNOW, they've gotta make sure that we haven't abused or neglected any children in the past year. I KNOW i's must be dotted and t's must be crossed. I KNOW this is all required. But that doesn't make it any less frustrating.

And that's just it. I'm frustrated.

Oh, if only I knew the person who takes care of these investigations. I would ask them to let me hand deliver this form - and, pretty please, could it be finished in less than a few weeks.

You know, in the grand scheme of things, a few weeks will probably not make a difference. But when you get to this point in the adoption process - it's easy to become egocentric, and feel like the whole world NEEDS to revolve around you and your deep desire to get your child at home. A few weeks seems like an eternity, when you're staring it in the face.

But then again, I was looking at a picture of one of Nathan's younger (2nd, I believe) cousins. This child is almost 12. He was TWO when Nathan & I started dating. I commented to his mother about how time flies, and how I can't believe how much he has grown. And then it dawned on me what I was saying. In 10 years, I will look back on this blog post and think about how quickly the years have passed...I will look at my own almost-12-year-old child and wonder how I could've ever thought that a few weeks was any big deal.

And to paraphrase my boss - maybe there is something that can be done about this delay in paperwork. We will do what we can...but sometimes we just have to take these roadblocks and realize we are on God's time and His timeline. It's not easy to see it that way, when we don't know the future. But we have to accept it - and pray our way through it.

And in ten years, we'll look back and see how much better it was to have Faith and Patience - because God's way was so much more than we could've imagined.