Momentary Setback

Well, I have good news, and I have bad news.  Let's get the bad news out of the way.  You know how very excited I was to finally get everything finished up with our home study and get it to our agency.  It should have arrived yesterday or today... just in time for an update from India saying that home studies must be nine pages or less.  Our home study is thirteen pages.  Sigh.  I have emails out to everyone involved in our home study and placement agencies and am waiting to hear back on what we need to change to make it an acceptable length.

If our world of communication does not implode as it did the week before Christmas, I am hoping that will be a fairly quick fix.  So we'll just set aside all the feeling that busting my tail to get that home study finalized, certified, apostilled and mailed out just in time for it to be obsolete is rather cosmically ironic, and focus on what needs to be done to complete this step (again).  Unfortunately, that is out of our hands until our social worker and placement agency are able to discuss this issue.  From what I understand, we now need to have our home study, dossier, and USCIS approval to be registered with India and eligible for a referral.  The first two have potential to be ready next week.  We already mailed out our USCIS application and will need to send an updated home study, which will hopefully not confuse them or delay our approval.  Even without delay, approval usually takes 2-3 months.

In good news, our dossier should be complete and ready to file some time next week.  We found out in the above mentioned update that India will be accepting new families and dossiers starting this Friday.  They are only accepting a certain total number from all adoption agencies per month, so that could slow things down, but at least the doors are open again.

So we've run into another momentary setback, and are holding on to the belief that what may seem like harm can be used for good by our great God.  I was due for a good cry today after a tough few weeks, and I let myself take a few minutes to indulge in that sweet release.  But now it's time to get back up, roll that burden onto mightier shoulders than mine, and keep on marching.