These past eleven weeks have been THE hardest. It is so incredibly hard to know that you have a piece of your family - your heart - on the other side of the world. I think about her all the time. What is she doing? Is she in bed yet? Is she sad, happy? Court is at the very bottom of the long list of "to-dos" in bringing our girl home. Knowing we are so close, yet so far away, has left us a mix of emotions. Add in the holidays, and that was intensified x 100.
We've felt so helpless. We knew there was an issue with court, but we had very little information on what was going on. It was, unfortunately, a fight only our orphange could handle. It was out of our hands, out of our agency's hands, and that feeling was horrible.
This morning as I was having my coffee - a very unexpected surprise came across my phone from our agency director.
Wait...what?! We have a court date...and it is NEXT month...which is literally only 4 days away?! AND we may finally get an updated picture? I was so stinkin' excited (and still am). After the long, hard, emotional few months we have had; that was exactly the news we needed to hear.
In India, adoptions are finalized in country. A few months ago we had to sign a power of attorney to our orphange so they could represent us in different matters. We do not have to be present for court as they + our advocate will represent us. We have no idea how long the court process will take. From what we have seen, it is normal to have 2-3 hearings before the case is disposed. Once the case is disposed, we will get verbal orders and then wait for written orders. When written orders have been received by our orphange, S's birth certificate and passport is applied for. Finally, when those are received, we travel to India to pick her up!
We have no way of knowing when that is going to be yet. Court could take us a 2, 4, 6, 8 months - there is no way to tell.
What can we (you) do at this point? PRAY. Pray that the judge who is to hear our case has compassion for S, that they have a heart for adoption, and that they want S to (quickly) become a member of our family.
As always, we will keep you guys updated!
