June 20, 2009 - Catchup from Africa

Allenni and Isaiah after he found the marker
Am I in trouble?

I found out today that DHR in Alabama has lost our paperwork or something and so this means that the papers did not get into ATL before June 16 and so we were told that we have to start all over in this I-600 process!!! This means more fees and more importantly more time! Lots of time. Of course, I had a little temper tantrum all the way in Africa mumbling to myself and sending emails to Duane and my social worker about why other people did not treasure MY ADOPTION FILE that had taken so long to complete and cost so much money to do. Did they not understand that it was precious paperwork? That it was a child’s golden ticket to a permanent family? How come the carelessness??? The other thing that bothered me was that I WAS

NOT IN CONTROL. Nope, not at all. Nada. Nothing. It was terrible!! I had to leave this in the hands of others! My husband! “Thoughts ran through my head, “Man, I should have trained him and filled him in on every step of these adoption processes. He knows nothing. Melissa, why didn’t you? Now he is not going to know what to do or how to do anything with this. Ugh! “ And sure enough, when I sent him an email asking questions, he wrote back, “Melissa, you are going to have to talk to C. , I don’t know what is going on.”

But here it was again, Control being taken out of my hands. You would think I would have learned this lesson by now. Maybe I have. I did realize it in the middle of my little tantrum. God wanted me to let go of control. So what I had to do was, Let go of it and give it to him. Usually to help me in this, I physically reach up my hands and literally give to God what I am wanting to worry over and control and ask him verbally out loud to take control of it. In a way, it helps me to actually give it to God by completing this action. So I did and so ended my little tantrum. I am having to completely trust my Father’s ways.

So I guess we continue to do what we have been doing, WAIT.

So, we are going to wait in Masaka. It is the weekend here and nothing else can happen here or in America and I don’t expect anything to take place either for several days. We leave in a few days for Masaka so I started getting the kids and I packed for the trip.

Isaiah found a black permanent marker today and guess what? He wanted to be blacker! The little stinker. He drew on his face and his legs and seemed to enjoy it! I felt like we needed to get a patch to put on his eye since it looked like he drew a strap. At first he thought he was in trouble and was a little puzzled as to why mama was pulling out the camera. But then he decided all was good and gave me a few smiles.