Gestation Periods:
Mice—19 days
Prairie dog—33
to 38 days
Mountain
Lion—95 days
Black bear—215
days
Orangutan—270
days
Sperm Whale—480-500
days
I was hoping
to have a great update by now. I was
hoping to shout L-O-A, but I can’t. Adopting is apparently most like giving birth to a whale (no wonder I've put on a few pounds!).
Our paperwork, and our baby girl sit, just waiting to get shuffled along. It’s been seventy days since we saw her face
for the first time and nearly burst with love for someone we’ve yet to meet.
Today is 40 days
of waiting for our LOA, and nearly 400 days in process for this adoption. Four hundred days of thinking of our baby
every day. Forty days of thinking “this
could be the day that we can begin counting down to our Forever Family Day.”
Remember when
you were a kid and you COULD.NOT.WAIT for your birthday, or Christmas, or
whatever the most special holiday was in your family? As we get older, it’s easy to forget how long
those few weeks seemed. It’s easy for me
to tell my kids, “it’ll be here before you know it.” Well, here I am again, feeling five years
old, thinking each day is taking FOREVER.
Forty is
such an interesting number. It’s
repeated over and over in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scripture, and it is
always related to trial, a time of change, or maturity. In
ancient times, a solar year was counted in 40 day cycles. It has been a trial to live outside of rules
and estimates, and any semblance of “fairness.”
There is simply no real way to tell when the paperwork might get
done. Predicting
(guessing) and being wrong only makes it more painful. It has been a time of maturity for our family,
and me specifically, as we get sister’s room ready and I answer the oft
repeated question from her brothers of “when, Mama, when?”
I wrote at
the beginning of this process about being taken to the end of myself, over and
over, and knowing the reality of “too much” was really God’s way of growing me
in places I would never have predicted.
Well, I’m growing. I officially
have stretch marks on my soul. Now
please, please let it be soon.
And for
those of you who have so patiently followed along and encouraged us, here’s a
peek into the room we’re working on (it's a lighter pink in person and I haven't finished figuring out the artwork for her walls)…
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