It has been great to work at reconnecting with friends and family. It is easy to forget what a couple months of busyness can do to one's personal relationships. Our church takes a 'sabbath' from its ministries during the month of August each year...likewise, I found myself declaring a sabbath from overtime or work on our house. It has brought some much needed rest and refocus on reading, reflection, and journaling. I am thankful for the slower pace.

Dave and I are at a stand still on the paperwork that we must send out for the adoption. In fact, we are now awaiting the return of our FBI fingerprinting/background check results. Our home study is being written, which hopefully we will see a draft in the near future. In the meantime, we are also awaiting the results of a personality/psychological inventory that we completed not too long ago for a psychologist out in California.

That inventory was a bit daunting...over 500 questions long, all of which were true or false! Once these inventories are processed and she reads our autobiographies, we will receive a call from the psychologist to confirm her findings and general impressions. She will also have some brief phone contact with our social worker to go over similar impressions and questions.

Once we complete these few final steps, we will be able to have everything apostilled by the state of Pennsylvania and then send it off to Children's Hope International for translation and delivery to Colombia...all hopefully done by the end of September or beginning of October! We will then begin a 6-9 month wait for an infant. I can't remember what I had last written here, but we were told shortly after our home study visit that we could expect to be placed on an infant list given Dave's birth and childhood in Colombia.

This was exciting news! While not something that we were specifically praying for, we look forward to the opportunity and privilege of parenting an infant. I must confess that I secretly hoped to have that opportunity, if not with our first child, perhaps future children. It is neat to see how God orchestrates life with desire. On the other hand, I am tentative about allowing myself to get too excited about any specific placement, knowing that the adoption process can be a bit unpredictable.

I have been reading "Talking with Young Children about Adoption" by Mary Watkins and Susan Fisher. This is a remarkable book riddled with reviews of child developmental studies and real life accounts of parents discussing the details of adoption with children of all ages. The vignettes have been especially helpful as I have found myself more recently worried about the future developmental milestones that we would face in raisng children. How will adoption be figured into those? How will we be able to tell what is developmental, expressed through the metaphor of adoption, and what is truly an adoption issue? What do young children understand of adoption? When is it best to introduce certain adoption ideas?

I have felt particularly overwhelmed by the notion of explaining adoption and equally concerned with the possibility of unknown information. While I know that this does not spell disaster for a developing child, I want so much for our children to have as many pieces of their history as possible. I guess I imagine not knowing the complete story to be more detrimental to their growth and self-concept than the knowing. Although, I am continually reminded that the knowing can bear just as much excitement, grief, and sadness. In God's hands these things rest. I take heart in knowing that God is not only preparing a future for us as parents, both equipping and enabling, but also is preparing a young heart to enter into this world. I am both excited and nervous to become a mother.