Downs and ups

This week has been filled with ups and downs and downs and ups. A few weeks ago I woke up with some weird sensations in my face, blurry vision, felt very foggy and unlike myself. I knew it was stress related but Scott insisted on taking me to the doctor who scheduled an MRI for a few days later. I went to the neurologist this week to discuss the results. As I was waiting to see the doctor, I got a message from a fellow adoptive Mama that has a little one in the same orphanage as Ryan. For some reason I felt totally overwhelmed at that very moment with adoption stress. I started to tear up in the waiting room and by the time I went to sit across the desk from the doctor in his office, I was sobbing and blubbering "international adoption ... (sniff, sniff)....no, not Russia....(sob)... India... (sniff)... my son (sob some more)...." I am most certain he was probably thinking, Lady I am not a psychiatrist, I'm a neurologist! He grabbed me some paper towels so I could wipe the snot from my face and after a few minutes I composed myself and we talked more about the results. He wasn't concerned at all about my pituitary gland and said we would monitor it yearly unless I had other symptoms creep up. The doctor totally agreed that the numbness in my face is most likely stress related and felt it all should subside once we have Ryan home. I continued to cry off and on all day... I was a mess!

I need to remember :: Psalm 46:10 :: 

Be still and know that I am God.

Know that He is working on our behalf even when I don't see it, feel it, hear it. He is always there working with us to bring our boy home -  In the good times and the hard times. He is there.

The day of this debacle I asked our case worker if she had heard anything about our court hearing. She sent me an email the next day saying we FINALLY have a court hearing for OCTOBER 28! PRAISE GOD! Of course there are still a lot of unknowns. We aren't sure how many hearings they will conduct. I have heard anywhere from 1-5. Our case worker says usually two but I'm bracing myself for several. From what I've read they usually take place consecutively (weekly) but there are a lot of Indian holidays in November so we may not finish the court process until the end of November, possibly longer. Once we receive the verbal approvals, the written one will be prepared. We were told it can take 1.5-2 months for the written approval to arrive at the orphanage. I inquired about this from a group of ladies I know that have adopted from India and was told it's possible the pages upon pages of documents are all typed up. On a typewriter. Which explains the 2 month wait! Of course once we get the written approvals we will still have to wait for his passport but that step is only taking about 2 weeks, which should give us some time to tie up loose ends before we travel.  It still looks like January before we head to India but at least we finally know something and we have a date to pray over. Please join us in prayer. <3

Over the summer we inquired about the number of children at Ryan's orphanage because we wanted to send them all a small care package. After 3 months we finally heard back about the details of the children and my sweet mother in law and I collected 30 stuffed animals, lots of candy, and 30 toothbrushes plus another photo book for Ryan. Today it arrived and the sister at the orphanage was SO excited! I was glad it arrived (since I sent it to the wrong address - yikes!) and overjoyed at how happy they were to receive such small tokens. Everything came from the dollar store but they were just thrilled - with so little. We plan to bring more goodies for them when we go to India. :)

Here's a small sample of what we stuffed in the box. I went back for more candy and toothbrushes. You can never have too much candy which means you definitely need toothbrushes, right?