Choosing to CELEBRATE!

Today we celebrate a big step being accomplished in our journey to bring ‘Hope’ home.  Today we woke up at 4:00am and drove 2.5 hours to attend our official fingerprinting (biometric) appointment with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). This appointment is the final step to “enable USCIS to determine whether you and your spouse are suitable and eligible to adopt a foreign-born child from a country” in a LONG list of requirements. These requirements must be completed even before you can apply to have this appointment. Here is a brief synopsis of the requirements:

Proof of US Citizenship

Proof of Marriage

Proof of Compliance with Pre-adoption Requirements

Home Study (Requires signing with an adoption agency and months of paperwork, home visits, background checks, doctor appointments, letters of recommendation, interviews, and other requirements must be met prior to receiving the official Home Study): Approx. $3,500

Complete a 13 Page Application

Pay the Filing Fee and postage: Approx. $900

Then you finally receive your appointment!

As you can see that there was a LOT of work, time, energy, funds, and requirements that went into getting to this day..so today we CELEBRATE!

However, this isn’t the first time we have celebrated this appointment day. On January 11, 2013 we celebrated our FIRST USCIS fingerprinting appointment. We had completed all the requirements listed above (including paying all the fees..except the Home Study fee was larger the first time since it wasn’t an update like our most recent Home Study was) and drove 2.5 hours with eager, excited, hopeful hearts that our adoption was moving in the right direction. We had no idea what the next two years would bring…and even though at times, as I wrote about previously in "More to the story," we thought our journey to bring ‘Hope’ home had come to an end, we WERE moving in the right direction. God had a plan that was bigger, more complicated, and more vast than we could ever have imagined..and today it brought us right back to where we were over 2 years ago.

While we were there, I was speaking to the same man who took my fingerprints the first time we had this appointment. The fingerprints they take are digital and so I asked him if the original fingerprints were deleted after a certain amount of time, trying to understand why this step was necessary to repeat. He laughed and said, “You know, fingerprints don’t change. And we actually do still have your first fingerprints in our system. But…they expire.” Lots of thoughts crossed my mind at that point…most of them were not even worth acknowledging as this “annoyance” is one of the smallest hurdles/issues we have faced…and in my heart, I knew what I had to say in response…because it is the truth.  “Well,” I said, “we will do whatever we have to do to bring our daughter home.”

So, today, instead of being bitter or angry because of a man-made rule that just acts as one more barrier to bringing our daughter home, we choose to CELEBRATE! We CELEBRATE today because we ARE one step closer to bringing ‘Hope’ home. Even though we repeated something we had done 2 years ago, a LOT in our situation has changed and is different today than it was back then. We CELEBRATE because of the love and generosity of friends, family, and strangers who have donated to make costs like these disappear (we have now received over $8,000 in donations in just 5 days of posting Relentless Love Returns). We CELEBRATE because we have a God who is sovereign over ALL of the details of our adoption and has brought us back to a point that is truly a miracle to be repeating.

Today, I challenge you to look at your life, your circumstances, and find something to CELEBRATE no matter what it is you’re facing…because we all share the same Creator whose sovereignty, love, power, and grace NEVER runs out, NEVER lets us down, and NEVER loses hope.  

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.” Declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

                                                                                                            Isaiah 55:8-9