“I miss you mommy.” The sound of that phrase coming from the voice and heart of a five year old would melt anyone’s heart. But when that missing has been going on day after day for 7 months, and your daughter is 3000 miles away the sound of it takes your breath away and hurts.

We are at the very last stage of our adoption. After three years of praying, learning, processing and paperwork we need one tiny piece of paper that says we can bring our daughter home. Around the final turn of the adoption journey, we’ve come up against another mountain. Call it a snag, extra step, roadblock, whatever you name it; it stands between us and our daughter coming home.

They say in adoption, that you hurry up and do a bunch of work and then you wait, and you wait some more. During the waiting I’ve kept myself busy buying clothes, redecorating the girls room, painting their bunk bed, etc. But when everything was done, there was nothing left to do but to wait, and then wait some more.

I hate waiting.

I’ve already admitted that I’m afraid of the quiet, and in the waiting there can be a lot of quiet. In the waiting there is a lot of opportunity for fear and doubt to set in…all the “what ifs”.  The truth is God uses the waiting to shape us, to refine us, to make us look at our motives and also to bring us lovingly to a place where all we are left with is to pray, to trust.

I am at the end of myself, the end of all the planning and all the doing. Now, its only God who can see it through. The funny thing is it has really been only Him all along. He’s been there in every step, working miracle after miracle. He’s got this. He’s holding us and He’s holding her. She was a daughter of the King before she was ours, before time began and His love will carry her through.

Today I took another step of faith; I bought our daughter a suitcase for the plane ride home. It may not seem like a big deal, but it is a huge step of faith for me. It’s my way of saying, God, no matter what obstacles I trust You to finish this work. It will sit in my room as a daily reminder that all my trust and hope must rest in Him.  I don’t know all the hows and whens about our adoption, but I just know He will see it through. There may be a mountain, but I know the Mountain Mover.

Are you in a season of waiting? How has your faith grown as a result?

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory…” Ephesians 3:20-21a