We are DTC!!!! (The Ultimate Friday Favorite)

You guys...there is only one Friday favorite today because it's just that good.

We are SO excited to share today that, after exactly six months and two days of paperwork, our dossier is on its way to China! EEEK!

Ahhh, I'm still squealing...DTC! Seriously, the prettiest little letters I've seen in quite some time.

For those of you unfamiliar with dossiers, it's basically a big giant packet of information sent to the country you are adopting from that verifies your health, finances, citizenship, etc etc etc. (Yes, three etc were required. It's that huge.) It is usually about six inches thick and sent over to China in a binder where it is translated and logged into the CCCWA which oversees all China adoptions.  It's basically the USA's way of saying, "These people are healthy, financially stable, legal citizens and not crazy. (Debatable.) They will take good care of a child from your country, so please approve them to adopt."

One of my favorite adoption bloggers, Kristin, likened this step to hearing the heartbeat for the first time in a pregnancy. It really just makes it so much more real to know that all the months of hard work are behind us and that we are just mere days or weeks from seeing the face of our sweet son. We are THRILLED! (Can you tell!?!)

So, what does this mean now?

Basically, this means that the China authorities will receive our dossier early next week, and we will be "logged in." They will give us a log-in date (LID), and that makes us eligible to get a referral call for ANY child that fits our profile from here on out. Prior to this step, we could get calls for special focus children (kids with moderate to major special needs or kids who are older), but our profile is really only open to non-special focus kids who are very young with minor or corrected special needs. We have no idea whether this will take five days or five months, but we are ready.

My GOODNESS are we ready!

What does the timeline look like from here?

That all really depends on how quickly we match. If we accept our first referral and his file is sent to us this month or next, we could potentially be traveling this summer. If it takes later into the spring or early summer for us to be matched, we will travel in the fall. There are really just a lot of factors still at play. But, we trust that this will all time out exactly as God intends, and we continue to believe that He has already worked out all of these details for us. We just need to keep taking each day as it comes and doing the next thing.

I will share one prayer request though before I close today...the matching stage of this process has given me a lot of anxiety for quite some time now. I have been praying for months that when we receive a child's file, we will feel certainty about accepting or declining fairly quickly. No waffling. Whether his birthday is a significant date in our adoption timeline or he has a name that means something special to us or whether we just see his face and instantly know he's ours...I'm just praying for some kind of confirmation. Some kind of nudge. I can't imagine how it's going to feel to open up a file of a child living halfway around the world who looks nothing like me and who has already been living for several months and ask myself, "Is he my son?"

My prayer is that I won't have to ask. My desperate plea is that I won't ask anything...that somewhere deep down inside, I will just KNOW. My hope is that Blake and I will look at that precious face, not be scared by any medical labels, and just KNOW he's ours.

Far-fetched dream? Maybe. But I serve a God who hears prayers, so I ask. And, I wait.

Thanks for continuing to journey with us, and happy Friday to all!