Still Waiting

We had hoped to be in China by Halloween. That benchmark date came and went. Now, here we are, four days before Thanksgiving, still waiting for the call.

Because of the 13-hour time difference between here and Beijing, our case manager at Dillon International will know within moments after her arrival at work each morning whether our travel approval has been faxed from China overnight. Since our last blog post, she has been gracious enough to e-mail us by 8:30 each morning with a message along the lines of, "Sorry, not yet."

So many reasons to hope and pray for travel approval soon: The quickly changing weather in northern China; the knowledge that our son's bed is next to an exterior door with what appears to be lousy or no insulation; the plane ticket costs that escalate to nearly triple the normal fare around the Christmas holidays; our son's need to begin the surgeries and subsequent speech therapy that will change his life forever; and, of course, our desire to begin our life as a family with him as soon as possible.

Instead, we wait, and we pray for patience and for God's will to be done. This is the hardest part. God just doesn't seem to be cooperating. Then, I'm reminded that we thought the same thing the month before we received our referral for Abbey. It came late, meaning our referral came separately -- and to a different city and province in China -- from the group we expected to travel with. We were devastated. And then, three weeks later, totally out of the blue, we received the phone call and the photo of Abbey. It was enough to make us wonder how we could ever doubt God's timing again.

But now we do. At least for today.