While we wait . . . (Part 4)

I have to share something that happened to me Friday afternoon of this week. As always, I went out to get the mail and immediately sifted through it to see if the long-awaited approval letter had come from the U.S. Department of Immigration yet. No, it wasn't there (sigh). 

I decided to email our adoption agency rep and ask her if there is some way I can follow up on this letter and find out where it is (I'm all about pushing things along if I can!). She wrote back to me and told me I needed to follow up and give them the Fed Ex tracking number for the papers I'd sent to them. To make a long story short, I never sent them any papers and I do not have a Fed Ex tracking number for them!

You can imagine how I felt when I realized I must have missed a step in this process. My brain started going through everything step-by-step. I looked through all the paperwork trying to see where I should have mailed something and exactly WHAT should have been mailed. I could feel myself starting to panic. 

Thankfully the Holy Spirit started speaking to me in that wonderful still small voice of His. I heard Him say "Be still and know that I am God." "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and HE will direct your paths." I stopped right then and prayed. I turned all of my panic and confusion over to Him and told Him (out loud!) that I was choosing to trust Him and not lean on my own understanding of the situation. I knew that even if I'd messed up and missed a step in the process, God was/is still in control. He knows what's going on and He is not surprised by anything.

After turning things back over to Him, I sent another email to our adoption rep and told her my concerns. I waited for nearly two hours (checking back on my emails often) before I heard back from her. She called me to apologize. She had made a mistake and was thinking of another family and another country when she responded to my original email. She told me I had done everything correctly and that there was nothing else I could do but wait. We should be hearing from the Department of Immigration soon.

Although I hate waiting, getting that word at that moment was like music to my ears! I was thankful to know that I had not missed something in the process and that I was not the cause of any delay. I'm willing to wait longer for that piece of paper to arrive, and I'm grateful to know that it should be coming any day now. Yesterday marked five weeks since the electronic files would have gone through to them, so I'm praying we hear something by Christmas. We'll see. The waiting game continues! : )