Difficult Decision

Hi all -

Well, it's been a month since I last posted, and it's been an eventful month for us.

After lots of thought, prayer, tears, and more prayer, we have decided not to move forward with our Kazakhstan adoption plans. We met with our agency on Friday to withdraw from the program.

This has been a tough decision for us.

Our paperwork has been at the Ministry of Education since October 1st of last year. We requested a child of either gender, under 18 months of age. This is a pretty typical request. But for some reason, our paperwork just has not progressed out of the MOE. Our agency has requested information about our dossier, and they are simply told "There's nothing wrong with the paperwork." That's the only info they've been able to get. Meanwhile, many families from our agency that are technically "behind us" in line have gone ahead of us. As I stressed in my previous post, we are ecstatic for those families who are traveling... but when this happens repeatedly, month after month, we're left with the impression that something's not quite right.

Also, because Russell is starting a new job in August (a teaching position), he has no opportunities for leave time until next summer. There's no paternal leave, and he doesn't qualify for FMLA. So even if we got an invitation to Kazakhstan, we'd have to decline it.

I have to stress that the staff at Children's Hope have been nothing but supportive, kind, diligent, and empathetic during this process. We have felt so blessed to be working with them and we'll miss them tremendously.

For those of you with CHI who are still waiting on a Kazakh adoption, you are in my thoughts. I used to obsessively read blogs written by those who were ahead of us in line, and when something wouldn't go right for them, I'd get really worried - both for those families and for us. Please, please, please... don't let our experience and our decision shake your confidence and your faith in your path to adoption. If your child is waiting in Kazakhstan, then nothing can stand in the way of your getting there!

All of you who are traveling or about to travel - I am thrilled beyond words for you and can't wait to follow along with your journey.

We haven't totally given up on our quest to be parents. We're not entirely sure what the next step is. We might do some more research on domestic adoption. For now, we're just going to spend some time enjoying each other's company and not worrying about the phone ringing (or not ringing) with adoption news.

Thanks so much to all of my new blog friends and to all my friends and family who've supported us...