Never place a period, where God has placed a comma. (Gracie Allen)

The girl's started preschool this week. They will be going two days a week. So I am beginning my walking program. I passed a Church on my walk and saw this quote, "Never place a period, where God has placed a comma." Gracie Allen

I thought this was so fitting to our lives right now. Both for Mike and for me. In 2006, at the same time we were adopting Emma, Mike sold his business that he had worked in for over 30 years. We thought that it was a period for him, but he is not the kind of man that can stop. He immediately began considering becoming a consultant and started out slowly but is now almost back to full time work. That is one of his comma's. He is constantly finding new challenges in business and in hobbies. So I guess for me sending my Meghan off to College was supposed to be a "period" of sorts.

But God had other plans for me. With our first "comma" everyone was surprised but then became very excited for us. With our second "comma" everyone just accepted the idea that a sister would be a good thing for Emma. But with our new "comma" there has been a lot of concern about what we are doing. All I know is that God has placed this comma in our lives and it is our job to listen to what he is telling us. I know there are many challenges ahead and there may be times when I question what we are doing, but I need to listen to what God is telling us to do. There are 350 million orphans in the World. How can I not listen when I am capable of doing something about it?

As far as how things are going on our paperchase for Lily, slow. It seems that I always hit the slowdowns. Pre-approvals have been taking only a week in some cases. It has been almost two and no pre-approval yet. Same with our 1800A application. In the charts that I have seen parents were getting their receipts in as little as a week. We are almost at two weeks for this too. I e-mailed them yesterday and they did say they got the application, so I know it is there. The next thing after that will be finger prints again and then if everything on the Homestudy is good, we will get approval. When we have approval then it is my turn again to run around and get State Certifications etc. so we can send our dossier to China. In the meantime Lily is growing up without the love of a family.

When we get pre-approval from China, I can then share Lily's picture and send her a care package, when we want to. I am not sure when to do this. With Emma and Meilynn, they were to young to realize what was happening. Lily is old enough to know. So if I send her our pictures and tell her she has a family, will she wonder why we are not coming now? Can a six year old understand all of this. I don't even understand why everything has to take so long. Spring or Summer must seem like forever to a 6 year old. I don't want her to think that we don't want to come and get her. Any advice on this for those of you who have done this?