Heart happy and heart breaking news...

I debated whether or not I would post today...it's been a roller coaster emotional day. But I knew this day was important in our journey so figured I'd jump on here and make an update. Let's start with the heart happy news first. We FINALLY received our I-171h in the mail today! Yes, the piece of paper from the government that says we have been approved to adopt finally showed up. We had received an e-mail from the Houston office a couple of weeks ago that said we had been approved and our letter was forthcoming. So after a week I e-mailed them back to see what exactly "forthcoming" meant. They responded yesterday that it had not been mailed and we should receive it in two weeks. So you can imagine my surprise when, as we were pulling the car out to head to Monkey Joes with some family in town, I see the mailman and figure I'll just jump out of the car and meet him at the box. I could see the large envelope before he handed it to me just sitting there and I told myself not to get excited because it was probably for someone else. HE GRABBED it for us though and handed it to me! I ran back to the car and told Josh that it came! He took the morning off because his parents, his brother, and his brother's 3 boys were coming over to play so he was home when we got it. I never imagined it happening like that! So I'm rushing around running back in to the house to get what I need to get everything mailed off...very exciting! I get back in the car and get my phone out and happen to see I have an e-mail from our AWAA family coordinator...I open it.

And here is the heart breaking news...not 3 minutes after receiving our I-171h we read that there are some new Ethiopia program changes. Now the Ethiopian government is requiring both parents to travel to Ethiopia 4-8 weeks after receiving our referral (picture and info of our child) and stand in court to state our commitment to the child. We then leave and wait 10-12 weeks to travel again to pick our child up. This is huge news to us (not to God mind you) but to us. This means twice as many trips and adding possibly $10,000 to our monetary needs. But what hit me the hardest is that this means that I leave my boys behind twice and my new child behind for possibly 10-12 weeks after meeting them, holding them, seeing where they are. This was heavy, heavy news to us today. It seemed to steal the joy right out from under us as we received our last piece of our dossier. Not to mention that it was just one of those days where EVERYTHING seems to go wrong from over tired children throwing MASSIVE public fits because the bandanas your buying for Rodeo day tomorrow don't already come with the trail mix in them to digging your Fed Ex tracking receipt out of the bottom of the trash for the important dossier we express mailed today. Josh looked at me when he was helping dig it out like "how did this happen?" and I looked at him and said "it's been that kind of day". I'll spare you all the in betweens of today but I will leave you with this. I will admit that I have been shaken deeply over today's events. I will admit that I have had thoughts ranging from "Oh, forget it...I give up" to "Of course we can do this with 6 trips if we need to". What I do know is this...as other friends have mentioned, adoption is spiritual warfare. What the enemy wants most from me is to give up and let this go and when I gave in today for moments I'm sure the enemy thought "well that was easy...I just had to throw in an extra trip to Africa and she's out!". And if the enemy can't get that then maybe me having a grumpy, defeated attitude is second best. So I'm letting this new news go. God will provide for us. God is not surprised by this. God has written our journey to this child from the beginning and we will be press on and be obedient. I saw a post on the AWAA yahoo group by a fellow adoptive parent that said it best when she quoted her devotional from today.

Most people glance at God and gaze at circumstances. We need to gaze at God and glance at circumstances.

Back to being joyful in mailing off our dossier! I'll let you know when it's officially on it's way to Ethiopia! We would appreciate your prayers over all of these changes and all of the families that this news affects.