Toone Family Journey: 12 months DTE!

I cannot believe I am writing this post. Honestly, I expected our sweet baby boy to be home long ago.

My intention with this blog originally was to chronicle our experiences in adoption. It has often been my outlet for thoughts and feelings bubbling up within. It became an avenue to share the emotions resulting from our roller coaster ride into parenthood. For obvious reasons it quickly shifted focus. Our sweet baby girl was born and I was forced to decide to keep only this blog, or begin another new one devoted to her, while keeping this purely for our baby boy.

I thought long and hard and ultimately decided to keep the one blog unifed by the journey to BOTH children. You see, one child does not exist without the other. They are BOTH PLAN A. So...it is time to spend a few moments to reflect on this adoption journey, as our paperwork has been in Ethiopia for a year now and our "paper pregnancy" is still going strong.

Lee and I are currently working to update our paperwork. Yep, its time for new fingerprints, FBI background checks, updated financial paperwork and another homestudy. Its been just long enough I've already forgotten the details involved in an adoption. I suspect its quite similar to forgetting the labor pains we experience in childbirth. How quickly we forget. I think that is God's built-in protective mechanism. :)

So here we are. 12 months in and naturally I begin to reminisce on how we got this far and I see God weaving the tapestry to adoption together since I was a young girl.

In the early 1980s, Ethiopia was wrought with the worst drought in its history. People were dying on the roadside, water was scarce and food was unavailable. Parents died and left their orphaned children to die. When I was about 9 years old I saw the images. A small bloated child with sullen eyes, flys buzzing round. It broke my little girl heart. Our church did a "Crop Walk" to raise funds to help feed these poor children. I cried as I lay awake nights thinking of them. I remember telling my mom I'd like to adopt one someday. I wrote a poem about "Hungry Ethiopian People" for my Girl Scout fair and got a ribbon. A couple of the lines went something like this:

Hungry people are starving today

They don't even have any money to pay

Hungry people are big and they are small

They don't even have a big shopping mall

I never shook the feeling that God had something in mind for me to do for them. I remember laying on the snowy ground on Christmas Eve when I was about 4, making snow angels and staring at a star. I remember feeling God so strongly and knowing He had a big plan for my life.

Fast forward to 2009 when I was laid off. I had 6 months to pour myself into reseraching adoption. Lee was somewhat interested but didn't come on board until much later when we attend an adoption support group at our church in Colorado and he saw two precious Ethiopian boys with his own eyes. DONE.

And you know the rest of our story. Here we are in our second year of "The Wait." Our paperchase journey took much longer than most and now we're stuck on a list with little movement. In 12 months we have moved up and down on the list. All in all we've only moved up 10 spots in this time. Not normal. More and more things are happening to tighten up the adoption process, including most recent developments which state that certain health issues will now make adoption more difficult or impossible. That coupled with current court delays and US Embassy restrictions are increasing the wait tremendously. In fact, when we first turned in our paperwork the wait to referral (being matched to a child) was only 4-6 months and now it is up to 18-24. OUCH.

We are certainly grateful for the new Concurrent Policy our agency instituted that has allowed us to stay on the list even though we were pregnant with and had Macie Faith. However, having her has only made the longing we feel for our little guy so much stronger. Luckily, we are busy with the care a 4 month old requires, but that does not speed up the time to bringing home our son and having Macie Faith makes us desire to bring him home all the more.

We have not given up. We will fight. We will spend more money. We will get more fingerprints, police reports, cashier checks and allow the social worker to dissect us more. Anything and everything to bring. him. home.

He is precious. He is desired. He is loved. He is anticipated.

And so darling son, we are here. We wait for you as we waited for your sister, with joy, longing, and hope.

We thought you'd be here by now...But we know God's timing is far better than ours and one day we'll look back and our family will be complete and we will know that you came just when you were supposed to.

We love you! It has been 12 months and we'd wait 120 years more for you. We can't wait to hold you, kiss you, and love you in person!

And as this beautiful song says...

"I never knew I could miss someone I never met..."

Oh sweet boy, how those words ring so true!