Today started off like any other day, and truthfully, I did not expect to see any exciting emails in my inbox, so what I received later today was a complete surprise. Here is how our day today unfolded- work certainly can be a little crazy some days, but today might have been one of the craziest days I can think of in a while. When you work in the field of international adoption, nothing surprises you and today was just one of those days when everything possible that had to be done or could possibly come up, came up- including tonight is China's referral matching night. Now, all of this to say-- after a very long and crazy work day, and knowing I had to work some tonight as well, I took a short break and went to prepare dinner for Nate and me when all I really wanted to do was kick back and relax for the evening.
It was at this point, while preparing dinner, that I decided to finally check my personal email and Nate received a call from work. Of course it would be at this very moment I see an email in my inbox that says "You are LID" to which I let out a squeal calmly waited for Nate to get off of the phone...not of course before doing a little jump and happy dance (reminiscent of my cheerleading days- but with no vocals, since Nate was still on the phone with our pastor). I know he thought I was crazy. FINALLY he got off of the phone and asked "What in the world?" to which I kindly explained what very important email we had just received and what exactly it meant.
(this is where I brag on him a little because he actually understands quite a bit about this process-- he's had years to hear me talk about these processes through my work and now after diving into this on a personal level in the last few months, he's probably learned more than he actually wanted to ) The exciting thing that I reminded him was that our dossier arrived at the CCCWA in China on Good Friday, April 6th which was 6 business days ago, and here we are today being notified of our LID. I was quite impressed at the quick LID, I must say. It can sometimes take up to 3 weeks for it to be logged in at the Center.
When I shared with my Chinese friend about our LID she said, "You do know that the number 16 is a lucky number in China" to which I grinned and let out a little laugh. (if there is one thing to know about China or the Chinese people- they have a culture full of tradition and superstition)
Ironically, we were already having Asian food for dinner, so after dinner I decided to take our chopsticks and celebrate the occasion of today with the following photo:
I also had a few fortune cookies around from some dinner we had before, and decided to take one and open it just for fun to see what the message was inside. It read, "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood".
I find this fun little message to be fitting for the adoption process, as for many, this process can certainly cause fear/anxiety over what is to come-- thoughts such as "What will our child be like?" "What type of medical condition will our child have?" "What will her story be?" "How is she doing right now- whether in her mother's womb or in the orphanage or foster home where she may be living?"
All of these thoughts can cause fear unless we choose to put all our anxiety on Him, knowing that He cares, understands, and is in control.
Even though we most likely have many months still before we are matched, our LID (log in date) is an important date from which the rest of our process will be based. Our desire would be that hopefully we will find out that China has reviewed our dossier (which is based on the LID) before we get matched. If it is reviewed before matching, we won't have to wait as long until we travel; however, if we are matched by our agency before China reviews our dossier (which can take a number of months before it will ever be reviewed) then we will have a longer wait until travel (personally- we don't want that cute little referral picture on the fridge for many months knowing that we can't travel). China reviews dossiers each month and it can take months to get through several months of dossiers. Currently China is reviewing dossiers that were LID from October 2011 and forward, so there are still 6 months of dossiers from October 2011 LID's and beyond that haven't yet been reviewed and will be reviewed before they reach our month of April 2012. This is why we wanted to get our dossier in so quickly, so it can basically "sit in line" waiting for our LID to come up for review. =)
So, as this exciting day comes to a close, we are thankful that this important step in our process is now complete and we can sit back thankful to God for a quick LID, that only He could have orchestrated.
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