Immigration Approval

Believe it or not, we got an email from USCIS yesterday notifying us that our immigration was approved. Mind you, this is our second time to go through this process because the waiting time has...(what's that word our agency uses?? oh yeah) ....lengthened. All families adopting a child overseas must be approved to adopt through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration office (USCIS). You must provide them with a stack of paperwork including the previously mentioned home study that took 4 months to complete. To say I am relieved to have this phase of our adoption completed..AGAIN.. is an understatement.

What does this mean for our adoption you ask?
It means that our adoption agency will now allow us to be matched with a little girl that meets the criteria on our medical conditions checklist. When... you ask? Your guess is as good as mine.
It could be tomorrow... next week.. next month.. next spring. It all depends on the number and type of files that our agency receives and the order that our medical checklist was received. We are near or very near the "top" of the checklists received so I am trying to be optimistic. Hard to do when you've been waiting for 2 years already!!

But somewhere in the back of my mind I know that this WILL happen. Friends that have adopted tell me this all the time and I know it's true, but hard to believe when you are stuck in the midst of it all. Several times over the past 2 years I have tried to MAKE something happen.
I have asked myself (and God) countless times if this is the road that we are suppose to take.
I have also prayed for God to take this longing from my heart if this adoption was not meant to be. And still.... it's there...
the same way it was always there before we adopted Madeline.
the way my heart feels when I see Madeline sleeping at night
the way my soul tells me the love I have for my children is endless
the way my mind tells me that being a "mom" is the best thing I will ever do in my life
The way I KNOW that my little girl and our "little sister" is somewhere in China waiting for us.