Woke up at 4 a.m.

And this was on my mind:

I talked to our social worker with our adoption agency yesterday. Two of the forms I sent her (the last two to complete our first set of dossier documents) the week before Christmas are apparently lost in the mail. She never received them. Had I known, I could have gotten her new ones out, but she thought I just hadn't sent them and I thought she had already received them. I've Fed-Ex'd her every other document, but I didn't this one because it was so crazy at Fed-Ex when I stopped by that day with pre-Christmas shipping. I decided just to mail it because she was also waiting on a couple of things from our home study agency that wouldn't be available until January 4, so I thought I had time to get them to her via snail mail. Lesson learned...I will continue to Fed Ex everything to her so I will have records of sending/receiving. It may cost more, but it is worth it to have the peace of mind that our adoption paperwork isn't hanging out in the back of our mail carrier's car for weeks on end.

I mentioned our home study agency also had to send a couple of things...there was a miscommunication between them and our adoption agency about how many copies of the home study were needed. One was sent December 14, but our adoption agency needed three. By the time I found out about it, our home study agency social worker had left for a mission trip and wouldn't return until Jan 4.

So why is this keeping me up at 4 a.m.? Because it has set us back a few weeks in the process and I'm fretting about it. We're now looking at getting our first travel date sometime in February, which means we probably won't actually travel until March. I had let my heart get set on traveling in February at the latest.

The thing is, it's nobodies fault...except Satan's. Our social workers have been wonderful and the situations I mentioned above are not because of any wrongdoing on their part. They are both so incredibly supportive and responsive, and they've been on top of things. It's just these little setbacks can be so frustrating! Especially now that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

If one thing has been revealed to me through the adoption process, it is that Satan is doing everything he can to frustrate the process. I hate that guy. I mean, think about it...have you ever heard ANYONE say, "We decided to adopt and the process was so EASY!" No, you are more likely to hear something like this, "When we adopted it took (insert long number of months years here), and (insert random setbacks here) nearly caused us to give up." And it's amazing to me how much paperwork mysteriously vanishes during the process. I'm convinced Satan is fueling the fires of hell with lost adoption paperwork. Consider this: knowing God's heart for orphans, and his expectation that his people care for orphans, why wouldn't Satan be working overtime to stop adoptions? He's working through the expense, corrupt agencies (not ours, thank goodness...we have an awesome agency...but there are some out there that are shady), government, and just the system in general.

So I'm laying here praying...thinking...blogging to get it all out. It helps me regain peace that Sarge is going to be o.k. until we get to him, whenever that may be!