Dossier

Yesterday was our ninth wedding anniversary - thank you, Lord.  I love my husband more than ever!  We have learned a lot over the past nine years and made many incredible memories together.  I was reminiscing recently about how it was last year, while celebrating our anniversary at an Italian restaurant, that we had our first discussion about adopting.

Now here we are.

One year later... and we are nearly finished with our dossier.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the adoption process, a dossier is basically a collection of personal documents that gets sent to the foreign government.  Two words describe the process of creating your dossier: crazy, yo.  Every piece of paper has to be signed, verified, notarized, certified, sealed, and/or authenticated.  There are separate (and some overlapping) requirements that must be met for each organization and governing body you are working with (in our case, our home study agency, our adoption agency, our state, our adoption agency's state, the U.S. federal government, and the Ethiopian government.)  I generally consider organization and attention to detail to be two of my personal strengths... but this process has had my head spinning on more than one occasion.  There is a right way to do certain things, but then there are other things that seem to be somewhat subjective.  Sometimes I think to myself, "why does adoption have to be so stinking complicated?!"  It just seems wrong.  Then I realize... it is what it is.  It is an imperfect process, not unlike the rest of this flawed world we live in.  And I will jump through every hoop... spend every minute necessary... and give every cent required to bring our son home.  Christ sacrificed everything to make me part of his family, so I will give whatever is necessary to make my Ethiopian son part of ours.  He is worth it.

So here we are.

We are hopefully just a few short weeks away from having our dossier submitted to Ethiopia.  The bulk of our paperwork will be behind us, and we will finally be on a waiting list.

Wow - it is starting to feel real.