The value that a single piece of paper holds

A week before Christmas, we got a pink piece of paper in the mail.  My favorite color or not, it held news I didn't want to hear, another deadline that I knew could not be met.  That piece of paper held incredible power over Julian's future. Today I had to respond to that pink piece of paper, regretfully stating that we just couldn't make their deadline because there were too many variables beyond our control.  Unless someone changes their mind and extends that deadline (which they already said they would not), then it looks like we will just be able to bring one of the boys home, not both.  No matter what, though, as long as the adoption of the younger sibling continues to go through okay, we're tied to both of them for the rest of our lives.

We also put a package in the mail today--our dossier, containing all but one last document that will go straight to our agency.  There should be no more documents passing through our own hands.  That package was filled with all sorts of different papers, all with fancy seals and stickers and even on special paper that can't be copied.  I realized that the specific papers that that envelope held had already cost thousands of dollars in order to retrieve.  That's not even the amount of money that was paid to our agency in a grant, nor the money that was paid to translate them all, nor the money that we will hopefully be able to use from another grant to finish paying the agency, pay our attorney, and cover some travel expenses.  That was JUST the money that went into gathering all those fancy papers with their fancy stickers, seals, and stamps.  (Fancy papers we had collected once before, but they've been expired for several years now). Then besides paying for all those special pieces of paper, we had to make sure that the words printed on them are exactly correct without a single mistake, without any ability to convey the wrong message.  Wow.  That's a lot of power that a fancy piece of paper can hold.

Yet the most powerful piece of paper right now is the one that is holding our entire process up. The clock is ticking, "Juan" continues to get older, wondering if he'll ever be part of a family, and all we can do is wait.  One silly little piece of paper, one that I ordered the very day after Thanskgiving before ordering any of the rest of them, and here we all sit, just waiting on it.  I tried every avenue to get another one quicker, but each attempt led me straight to a brick wall.  Who knew that getting a simple little birth certificate could be such an ordeal?  If I were not a woman of faith, I think I would be tearing my hair out by now.  I have a feeling that God is using this crazy delay for a reason, though.  They said it will be another week and a half for it to get here.  Ten more days.  Funny how after four and a half years of waiting for this child, those ten days suddenly seem like an eternity away.

One single piece of paper with a special stamp on it, attached to another piece of paper with a special sticker.  Who knew how much power those two pieces of paper could hold?