"Blah," said Toad

Anya Rashi and Eliza

Since Friday, I've been trying to decide if I feel like Charlie Brown when Lucy keeps pulling the football away just as he tries to kick it . . . or if I feel like Toad of "Frog & Toad" fame. I think Toad wins. BLAH.

Along with other families adopting from India, we have received some bad news. Again. All families from outside India were supposed to re-submit our dossiers and a few other documents by October 1, after which date we would be assigned to a particular orphanage -- and then be matched with a child.

On Friday, however, we learned that there is a backlog of 550 families within India who must be processed first. While we think it is ideal for children to stay in their birth country -- and we are praying that they find families soon -- it was so hard to hear that our adoption is delayed yet again. Our new deadline is December 31, and the Central Adoption Resource Agency in India is not guaranteeing that anything will happen then either. Needless to say, we were heartsick reading that e-mail.

We were actually sitting at a table with Anya Rashi at our favorite Indian restaurant when Peter glanced at a new e-mail on his phone. He decided to read it during our lunch, which told me it was something very important. (Later, he told me that he had thought it was going to be good news about our dossier arriving in India.) Then I watched as his face fell, and he shared the news about the delay. Our eyes filled with tears, and Anya Rashi asked us what was wrong. We explained that we were having a day when we were missing her little sister, just like she sometimes does. Trying to help us feel better, she chirped, "Well, you don't have to worry about me today -- I'm not having one of those days right now."

We never dreamed that this process would take so long. Anya Rashi's adoption took 2 years and 1 month, and now we're coming up on 2 1/2 years with no end in sight. It is very difficult and so painful to know that millions of children in India need a family, and we are ready and willing to love one of them . . . but we have no control over when that will happen. We can only ask that you join us in praying for something miraculous to happen to speed up the process.

On Saturday, Anya Rashi had this discussion with her friend Eliza:

Eliza: Are you sure your little sister is ever going to get here?

Anya Rashi: Remember those really old people in the Bible who had a baby?

Nancy: Do you mean Sarah and Abraham?

Anya Rashi: Yes! So if God says we're going to get our baby sister, then it's going to come true.

Aside from the slightly unflattering comparison to the elderly Sarah and Abraham (!), we are taking heart from that truth: if God says it's going to come true, then it is going to come true. We are deeply saddened right now, but trying to rest in that truth.