Heartsick

Posted by Traci at 10:05 PM

So if you’ve read my blog you know we had lots of adoption fun (translation: agony) with our homestudy agency.  I thought once we made it through that hurdle it would be smooth sailing.  Obviously, this is our first adoption.

  

Just for fun, I’ll tell you the story of 1 piece of paper.   A very ornery and naughty piece of paper known as my medical release form.  Sit a spell…

Nearly six months ago I went to my very nice doctor and got a physical.  She completed the medical release form and had someone at her office notarize it.  Then we sent it to our adoption agency.  What I didn’t realize is that the adoption agency wouldn’t actually look at it until our homestudy was complete (because you aren’t really an adoption client until the homestudy is done).  Fast forward two months… our homstudy is complete and I assume they will now look at the form.  Wrong again young padawan.  

Apparently you aren’t really, truly an adoption client until you have a completed homestudy and they have signed agency contracts.  I had no idea we hadn't signed offical agency contracts because we had signed so many papers with them already.  So we sign the "official" forms and send them back and wait. 

A week later I get an email that says: “I received your packet today- thanks! Unfortunately, I noticed that only the front pages of the program overview were initialed. As part of our licensing requirements, I must ask you to sign both sides of the pages.”.  Awesome.  We initial all the pages, front and back, and send them in again (snail mail of course).

Now we are an official adoption client…and they finally start looking at our stuff.  It seems the date the doctor signed the release form and the date the notary signed it were a few days different.  So they send it back to us for the doctor to re-do.  Which she kindly does.  More snail mail.  Two weeks later we receive word that they’ve sent the form to the State of Tennessee to be authenticated…good news finally.  Except that the State doesn’t approve the seal the doctor’s notary used.  Her seal said “Notary Public at Large” instead of “State of Tennessee Notary Public”.  Oh, and they also let me know that the six month window on getting this completed is quickly closing.  If we missed it we would have to start all over with a new physical.  More awesome.  So they send it back for the doctor to re-do.  Again.  Which brings us to this morning and me at my doctor's office sobbing.  

My doctor has kindly agreed to re-do it again and after some calls and more tears on my part, we found another notary who has the correct seal.  In this mess my doctor has been nothing but kind, something I count as a “little mercy”.  


This is 1 piece of paper.  Out of a dossier of hundreds.  Each with their own set of problems.  But just like God prepared the whale for Jonah, he prepared this verse for me.  I'm reading through Proverbs and got to chapter 13 last night.  Here's what I read:

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But desire fulfilled is a tree of life.  
Proverbs 13:12

Amen to that.