This past Thursday morning at work I noticed an email come through from Terra Baily, my Family Coordinator at AWAA.  And then half a second later, I realized the subject line read "On Deck."  I'm on deck.  "America World anticipates that families with a DTE date on or before 10/3/08 (that's me!!) could receive a referral within the next one to two months."  That means it WILL be sooner rather than later.  AWAA is officially telling me in this very informative email that Baby Prause is in the works.  Soon, I will be matched with a baby girl and she will be moved from one of the orphanages to AWAA's Transition Home in Addis Ababa.  And I will get THE CALL..."Susan, this is your referral call!  You have a beautiful baby girl!" 

 

When I began this adoption process nearly three years ago, I had a very clear picture in my mind of becoming a mother through adoption. However, because we live in this world, and because international adoption is extremely unpredictable (yes, yes, I was warned), that picture of motherhood became rather blurry.  Where exactly would my child come from?  Would it be a boy or a girl?  Would there actually be a child, or was I on the completely wrong track for God's plan for my life? I repeatedly asked God for a sign that I was on the right path.  Should I pursue El Salvador? How long should I wait for the El Salvador program to produce referrals? Should I switch to the Ethiopia program? Should I take another look at domestic adoption? Sometimes God speaks in a very soft voice and I needed him to shout at me through a megaphone.

 

There are several AWAA families that had switched, like me, from the El Salvador program to the Ethiopia program. I had heard from several of them that they had received their dossiers back from El Salvador after making the switch.  I had never received mine.  It was obviously lost somewhere in El Salvador, I thought.  It probably never made it through the translation process and I was never in line for a child from El Salvador. I never received confirmation that my dossier was actually in El Salvador. What if it was stolen, or thown away?  This past Thursday, as I arrived home from work, still on a high from receiving my On Deck email, I noticed a package inside the front door of our building. It was for me, from AWAA.  It was my dossier from El Salvador. It was in a red folder with big bold letters on the front that said "FAMILIA PRAUSE."  It was very thick, as all the documents I had sent were translated into Spanish.  I brought it inside, and sat at the kitchen table with the old dossier in one hand and my On Deck email in the other, and I felt a sense of peace I haven't felt in a very long while.  I learned a great deal by going through the El Salvador experience, but didn't recognize at the time that it was a stepping stone, leading me to my daughter from Ethiopia. When I was making the choice to pursue the El Salvador program, I wasn't ready to choose Ethiopia, even though I was intrigued. I would have loved a child from El Salvador, but it wasn't meant to be. But God knew that going through that experience would prepare my heart, and the hearts of my family, for this very special little girl from Ethiopia. I didn't need God to use the megaphone; He just needed time to work in me. Sitting there at the kitchen table Thursday night, I heard Him, and I was able to look back on these past three years in a very different light. I started feeling that same excitement I felt when I first began this process...I'm going to be a mom!