Century Club

Well, I feel blue. I had high hopes that this would be the week. The week that we could finally move forward. But we're not. Today we are at 100 days in our wait for our LOA, which, in the adoption community, is called the "Century Club".  When you start your wait for your Letter of Approval to adopt your child, no one expects to be one of the very few who are forced to join the Century Club.  I certainly didn't expect it but I definitely feared it.  The more time we spend waiting for our LOA, the more time goes by without Liana.  The more time she spends in an orphanage.  I'm in a FB group of people adopting from the same orphanage as Liana and they're all on a similar timeline...or they were.  Everyone who was even close to being on the same timeline is moving on with plans on when they'll be traveling and everyone who was behind me, is moving on too.  I'm happy for them but I'm sad that I will be watching all of these families bring home their children and thinking that I should be with them.  I think the comparison is the worst.  If I didn't know that people who have been waiting so much less time than us were getting their LOAs all the time, then maybe it wouldn't be so hard.  But I do know and it crushes me.  Liana deserves to come home just as much as anyone else's child.  There's no reason to hold us up that I know of.  Nothing wrong with our dossier.  So why are we still waiting?  I don't know.  It's just bad luck.  We had a ridiculously long wait to get out of translation and now it looks like we're going to have a long wait to get out of review.  I know some other families in the same boat and some who have been waiting longer and my heart and prayers go out to them every day.  Tomorrow is the first day of July, which is a day that I've been dreading.  I didn't want to enter another month without being able to move to the next step toward bringing our daughter home.  I'm just sad.  I'm sorry to be so glum.  I know no one wants to read a post like this but I do think people coming behind me on this journey need to know that it does happen.  And I also want to, again, request prayers from anyone who is willing to pray for us.  Please pray that we and others in a similar boat, will get our LOAs and begin the next steps toward bringing home our children.  So I hate to leave a post on such a crummy note so I'll do what I apparently love to do, and add a picture.

Maybe this will help the crummy mood I just left you in. ;-)