Finding Time

I've been wanting to adopt for about a year now, and so I've had a lot of opportunity to observe other families go through the adoption process. Some of the obstacles they've encountered have surprised and saddened me. Some have family members, friends, or even complete strangers who insult their children, tell them they'll be ruining their lives, or otherwise harangue them for wanting to adopt. We, on the other hand, have yet to encounter anyone who hasn't been supportive. Some of them might be a little confused as to why we want to do this, but they're still supportive, and some of them are downright ecstatic (as am I, so it's great to have people share those emotions)! Other friends have had problems with paperwork having to be re-done, the children they were hoping to adopt becoming unavailable, and so very many have had a hard time trying to finance their adoptions. We haven't had those problems. We've been blessed with what we need to be able to make everything happen, at least so far, and I've sometimes wondered (while knocking on wood) why we've been blessed to not encounter so many of the problems I've seen other families face.

Lately, though, I've realized we do have our own obstacle when it comes to this adoption: time. I mean, I know everyone else is busy, and finding the time to add one more thing to an already crazy schedule is hard. But somehow everyone else seems to be able to do it without too much of a problem. So far we've managed to keep on top of it as well, but it turns out it's the area we're really struggling with. Jacob's work schedule is always pretty crazy, but every time we need to get something done for the adoption it seems like the craziness goes through the roof. We finally got our fingerprint appointments from USCIS, but we haven't been able to go to the office to get them done because he's had non-stop meetings all day every day. I mean that literally -- tomorrow his first meeting is at 6:30am, and I doubt he has a break of more than half an hour any time during the day.

And every time his schedule finally gives him a (tiny) break, something seems to happen with the kids. They need dental work done, or we need another IEP meeting, or they're just having such a hard time in school that they desperately need one on one time with Mom or Dad. We only have a few more pieces of paper left to finish for the adoption, but lately it seems like we can't catch a break. Tonight was the first time in two weeks when Jacob and I even had a chance to sit down and talk about our schedules and what we might be able to make work (though we didn't actually come up with a solution).

Luckily we still have about a month before the paperwork needs to be completed, but unfortunately we mostly only have the hard papers left, and they'll require at least 5 trips to offices of various sorts during business hours. If you wouldn't mind praying that somehow we'll be able to find the time to make all of this happen when we need to, I would really appreciate it.