Practicing Patience

Wow! It has been four months since we have posted anything. It's not that life has been too busy, or that we haven't thought about it. There were many times that I wanted to write, but when I thought through what I would share, I had a hard time being positive. For some reason it's really hard to admit when things just aren't going so well. I kept waiting, thinking that I would post once Situation A got better, or once there was a resolution to Situation B, etc. It's so much easier to share publicly when you have a success to celebrate. I didn't want to share all that was going on with us because I didn't want to seem like I was attempting to rally a pity party. Also it was because I was too stuck in our current circumstances to truly recognize and give thanks for the many many consistent blessings we have... I was not proud to be in that place.

So finally, I am here to write an update on what is going on with the adoption and beyond. Even though nothing ground breaking is happening with the adoption, every life situation that comes at us is in one way or another relative to our adoption.

Back in June, Nate lost his job. It was very unexpected and knocked our feet from underneath us. The timing of it, following our emotional adoptive country change, financial struggles, and other difficult life decisions, seemed almost too ironic to be real. Not only feeling confused and upset, we were worried about the adoption. Our budget has been as narrow as we could manage since January, diligently putting the necessary funds toward the adoption. Not only that, but having a strong health insurance plan and stable finances is important to even be approved for a home study.

Nate, being much stronger and hopeful than I, took a risk and began to work for a small family owned company completely unrelated to his video production work. Due to circumstances beyond his control, after just a few weeks, he was again without a job. In the meantime, we have kept in touch with our social worker and our placing agency and have been assured that this will not affect our adoption. In fact, our placing agency was planning to wait to submit our home study 5 months after it was finalized, in an effort to avoid having it expire before a referal. Once again we were affirmed that Taiwan is the right program for us. Very few programs allow you to have significant changes in your home study, even to the point of having to wait to finalize it, but still allow you to be moving on the waiting list.

Recently I received a call from our placing agency sharing that the nursery they partner with in Taiwan continues to successfully place children in need of a family with them. Just this last month they had 6 accepted referrals; children that will now be welcomed into their families! We continue to remain on the waiting list and are around 14th. This means the original estimate of about 1.5 years is still accurate! While we would be thrilled if that time frame shortened, we have found a place of peace and patience with the process and couldn't be happier to be on a waiting list.

As far as Nate's job and the many other unknowns in our life right now, we have also been practicing patience. We are learning that truly practicing patience requires us to also practice thanksgiving- to recognize our blessings... and there are so so many.


Thanks for following us and taking the time to read! Hopefully the next post will come much sooner than this one did.

Lindsey + Nate