The Waiting

Waiting.  Still Waiting.  The holidays had pasted.  It was still freezing butt cold outside.  We still hadn’t heard a thing about the siblings, until January 20^th when our agency emailed us the following:

Dear Candie and Stacy-

Happy Monday.  See below.  Sounds VERY PROMISING!  Particularly #3!!!!!  Can you please write up detailed reply and send to me for review?

Thank you!!!!

 ICAB (Inter Country Adoption Board in the Philippines) requested us to write a letter informing them of how we were preparing our children for the potential adoption of siblings, how we would be able to handle the special needs of C.J., and then #3 was related to our immigration paper status.  What was so exciting about that is once ICAB had our reply, we knew by protocol that if they were going to send our file to the board we must have been chosen to be the parents!  The ironic thing about it is that ICAB wanted our reply within 10 days.  So….they take 2 months to get back to us, and we have 10 days?!?  Oh the irony.  And such an exacting picture of the adoption process.  Wait.  Hurry up!  Wait.  Hurry up!!

 We had been told that our file and one other family’s file went to the orphanage for their director and social worker to review.  In the Philippines they have the people who know the children best, choose between two families.  I can’t imagine how hard a job that must be, but I’m very thankful that strangers don’t make such a decision. 

 We were not ready to have a party yet.  Too many siblings had fallen through, and yet we started to get excited and a bit worried.  You see C.J. has a medical issue called Metabolic Myopathy among many other respiratory issues and digestive issues.  He has been on an antibiotic every month of his life, at least once, sometimes twice.  When we had thrown our names in the hat for the kids, we sort of just skimmed over things.  Ok.  Foolish.  But in our defense we had little hope the kids would be ours, and we also knew that from the beginning of time God knew who would be a Shipman.  So really by a whole lot of faith we waited.  And then when it started looking like the kids could be ours….OH BOY….lots of late night combing through all of the medical reports. J  The awesomeness of the situation is that I am a Nutritional Therapist and Certified Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) Practitioner.  Some of C.J’s issues I really, really understand.  He was meant to be mine.  We also had a feeling that he would be much better health-wise once he was home.   

And so we waited.  This time with a bit more anticipation!