Yes, we're still here.

Has it really been over two months since we last posted?

I wish we had something to say that's not the same thing -- we're waiting, we're in a holding pattern, we just have to be patient -- but that's basically it.

Sometimes I wonder what our child will think about being adopted. So many adopted children talk about feeling like they were abandoned by their birth parents, unloved and unwanted. That's a supremely painful feeling to have, I'm sure, and I will never be able to fully understand it.

Logically speaking, though, the birth parents loved the child enough to give him/her a better opportunity at life. There are millions of reasons a birth parents might make an adoption plan for a child, and there's no way I could begin to cover all of them, but in general this sort of thing is not entered into lightly.

And I wonder if our child will ever truly be able to appreciate how wanted, needed, and loved he/she ALREADY IS, even though we don't know him/her yet.

There's no way to describe this wait if you haven't experienced it yourself. Waiting to be chosen may be the most difficult thing I have ever done. Our agency told us that the "average" wait it between 15 and 18 months from a particular starting point; we're in month 8. Of course, it could be tomorrow, it could be in 2012 -- we don't know. And those 8 months don't count the prior 9 months of planning and waiting... or the prior however-many years of wondering.

Officially, I've been waiting for 8 months. Unofficially, I've been waiting for over a decade. I do truly believe that it will happen in God's timing, but I'm only human and I can't help but wonder sometimes why He's taking so long.

--David