Blah.

Nothing to report really.  Just needed somewhere to ramble.  I'm feeling in a slump today.  Not specifically regarding the adoption, but it's getting lumped in with the general melancholy.  It's been over 6 weeks since we applied with USCIS (and 3 weeks since we did our electronic fingerprints for them) and we still haven't heard back.  That is the ONLY paper we are waiting on to have our paperwork complete on the U.S. side, so it will be nice to have that in hand.

Blah.  Just blah.

Like everything hard in life, some days are easier than others to feel the capacity to endure it well.  I've felt very optimistic about things general over the last few months, but today I'm just having one of those days where I don't feel like I'm "waiting well".  I feel frustrated.  I feel like we've been doing this forever and feel like I'm just in a hamster wheel going nowhere...and then I remember that we're also really just starting this whole thing over (with Haiti this time) and that gets me a bit down.  We officially started this international journey with such excitement 2 years, 7 months and 5 days ago.  If the timeline (insert laugh here) that they gave us at that time had held accurate we would be completely done with the process by now.

All that being said, I do know that we are where we are supposed to be at the time we should be here. I believe that despite the heartache, loss of money and time, and dashed expectations...that the Lord has not decided just at this time to guide our journey to complete our family, but rather that He has been guiding us this whole time.  Orchestrating things the way they need to be.  We may or may not understand the intricacies of it all right now, but I do feel that is the case.  And I can hold those convictions while simultaneously feeling the exhaustion of the journey.  Honestly, sometimes what makes it emotionally exhausting isn't what we've already been through, but in knowing that there is so much still to go through - and now that we don't wear those rose colored glasses anymore about the process that realization can be a lot to swallow on melancholy days like this.

That USCIS approval may just pierce that melancholy and let light in for me...hopefully it comes soon.