One Step Closer

The pace of our adoption is picking up. Monday we received our LOA (Letter of Acceptance) from China. This is basically an official letter and certificate from China that says they have received and "accepted" our letter of intent to adopt Caleb. Today we sent it back to Holt, our adoption agency, and can now expect to wait "an average of two to five weeks" for our travel notice. Once our travel notice arrives we will be given "an average of two to four weeks" to get to China to meet Caleb. This means we could have Caleb in our arms in as soon as one month. Wow!!! More realistically, though, we still have to wait about two to three months.

The one thing we have learned about this entire process is that God has his own timing: what began as a three (plus) year journey has turned into a journey to a new son that could be complete in less than one year. Every step has been met with a completely different time line than we originally anticipated. In this we are learning to be both thankful and flexible - we do love to plan (especially Meredith). But if we had stuck to our "plan" we would not be blessed with this awesome new little guy. We've finally stopped trying to figure out God's timing and started jumping through the doors when he opens them. As usual, his plans are better than ours, and we are sooooo thankful for that - and for Caleb.