The Domino Effect

Have you ever set up one of those long, winding domino deals where they stand on end and are close enough together to hit the next one in line? And you go to the beginning and gently knock the first one over...it crashes into the next one, and that one into the next one...and so on?

Yeah. That's the story of our adoption journey.

Seriously.

All it takes is one thing to create the domino effect. One little thing that starts the whole process.

In our case, it seems that, during every step of the way, something crashes. Starting the domino effect.

Over three weeks ago, the DHS person came out to our home and checked it over.  Everything looked great. CHECK.

I gave her a list of TEN references.  (She only needed FOUR) and asked everyone on the list to send in their references as quickly as possible.  CHECK. CHECK.

They did, of course. (Thank you to all of you who did this for us!)

Then the process, ONCE AGAIN, screeched to a halt. 

So, I checked in last week with her. She said, "oops, I was out of the office.  I will check into that now."

"Out of the office" seems to be the most common domino effect.  Causes an instant stop to the process. Whether it is something legitimate or not, we will never know. I try and believe the best in people, I really do.

The very first 'domino' after our girl was declared legally free was the ICPC request.  That got stuck for over 3 weeks too. She was "out of the office" due to a family emergency.  And our paperwork sat. It was only discovered after I continously asked.  Someone finally checked and "oops" it hadn't got sent.


Then it finally got sent to OR ICPC and sat, once again.  After harrassing them some more, (wow, I am getting pretty good at that!) it was discovered that, "oops" the request to get us certified had not been done.  Also, she had never been placed in the WARE list, which apparently has to happen first before the ICPC process can even begin. 

Another "oops"

We were selected for her last fall. We met her for the first time in October. She was finally declared legally free on December 7th. 

It is now March 21st.

The gal who came to our home said it shouldn't take more than a week to get the foster certification done.

"Oops" it took THREE.

Yes, I am frustrated. I am human. I succumb to human emotions.

I am not perfect at all. I whine. I cry. I gripe. I moan.

A person I felt was surely behind me in my endeavors told me, "Hey, maybe this wasn't meant to be if all of these roadblocks keep happening."

really?

In a year, I will have forgotten all of these roadblocks.  All of these frustrations will *poof* be gone. Much like a woman forgets the worst parts of a pregnancy and birth.  The newborn baby takes all of those memories and makes them dissappear.

Such will be the case with our daughter.

We will forget the hard struggles of our adoption journey once she is here.  Then we can begin our own domino effect. The one where the years zoom by and before you know it, she will be an adult. And we will wish we could start the whole process over as she stands on the threshold of life, ready to strike out on her own. 

Then we will long for a way to reverse the domino effect.