Paperwork pregnant

It's all done. Our paperwork is complete. We recieved our 171H form (which I think has changed names) and our dossier has been apostiled by the state of Alabama and shipped to Sasha in Ukraine! It's really kind of exciting! Sasha is a Ukrainian man who facilitates our adoption on the Ukraine side. I had the opportunity to meet with him a few weeks ago in Brimingham. He has several people who work for him (I guess it's like another agency in Ukraine) and they will translate our dossier into Ukrainian and then Sasha will submit it to the SDAPRC. The SDA only accepts american dossiers on Mondays for a couple of hours and they have to be submitted in person. (Meaning Sasha has to hand deliver them to the office) I don't really understand how it all works and it sounds a little scary, but somehow he manages to get Lifeline's dossiers submitted despite the fact that there are hundreds of people from the US waiting to submit. Now we just wait for an appointment date.

Mountains bow down...

I joked last week that I wasn't sure God really wanted us to adopt internationally anymore because we can't seem to get our hands on a 171H form. Somehow there has been just a 'little' problem with almost everything we have done with our 171H. (This is the piece of paper, from Atlanta, that we are waiting on to send our dossier). Our fingerprint appointment went great, everything seemed to be coming along smoothly, and the lady in Atlanta decided that maybe the paperwork she had was a copy and not an original! God has shown me something this week-maybe over the last few weeks- I CANNOT CONTROL when someone else is going to do something or when something is going to happen. I can chose to waste my time and energy trying to "fix" whatever the latest problem may be, or I can chose to not let it define who I am at that moment. From now on, I chose to not allow myself to become so tunnel visioned on this adoption process, that I neglect my God, my family, or myself. Here's where the mountains come in..
Isaiah 40:4 says
Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. (5) And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it.
We serve a God that the "mountains bow down and the seas roar at the sound of His name!" If He is powerful enough to command the mountains and the seas, He is certainly powerful enough to 'chill out the lady in the CIS office in Atlanta'. And we can rest assured that He will be able to handle any other problem that WILL come up between now and coming home time. My new prayer for this adoption is that 'the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind will see it together'.