YES.

Our adoption process has been smooth so far, although we know once everything gets to China and out of our hands that strange things can happen.  Still, God is in control.  But the waiting....wooweee the waiting is tougher than we thought.  I've never claimed to be a patient person, but God is showing me that I can't claim any patience at all with this process...every drop of patience I have is from Jesus.  He is cultivating it in me.  Because every bit of myself wants to speed up this process so that we are there, right now, holding Zachary in our arms.  Josh told me yesterday, "You know what....waiting is so hard once you've already fallen in love with his face."  And that's the truth.  We don't even know our son.  We only know his face, and yet our hearts long for him and miss him and we want to be the ones tucking him in at night.  We want to be the ones who catch his giggles and smiles throughout the day.  We want to walk with him through his fears and frustrations.  NOW!  But God is showing us that there is a purpose in the waiting, and that beautiful things bloom out of perseverance.  The other day an adoptive Mom who has been there/done that said to me, "I'm not telling you it is going to be easy, I'm telling you it is going to be worth it."  And so, the waiting and the uncertainty is difficult, but the reward will be huge!  May God help us wait with grace.

"When you say YES to adoption, you are saying YES to enter the suffering of the orphan, and that suffering includes WAITING FOR YOU TO GET TO THEM. I promise you, their suffering is worse than yours. We say YES to the tears, YES to the longing, YES to the maddening process, YES to the money, YES to hope, YES to the screaming frustration of it all, YES to going the distance through every unforeseen discouragement and delay. Do not imagine that something outside of "your perfect plan" means you heard God wrong. God has already said YES to adoption. There is NO perfect adoption. EVERY adoption has snags. We Americans invented the "this must mean God is closing a door" or "God must not be in this because it is hard," but all that is garbage.  God is in the middle of it all.  You know what's hard? Being an orphan. They need us to be champions and heroes for them, fighting like heck to get them home. So we will.  We may cry and rage and scream and wail in the process, but by God's grace, get them home we will."

--Jen Hatmaker (adoptive Mom)