Joys of Paperwork

Last night, I was gathering up paperwork to filling out forms so we can change countries and renew our 171H which is a letter from the us government that allows you to adopt an orphan internationally and bring them home.  I remember a time while "paper-chasing" for our China adoption when I liked the paperwork.  I found it kind of fun.  I was doing something to bring home our baby that we would meet in 18-24 months.  It seemed straight forward methodical and I found a peace in gathering everything up.  42 months later I have lost the joy along with other things. I lost a home study.

I could not find our home study from 4 years ago, we need to submit a copy of it with our update we are sending to immigration. I had kept meticulous records in the beginning but after almost 4 years they have started to fall apart.  Who does that?  Who loses one of the most important documents of the adoption process?  Yep that would be me.  I am a loser, literally.  I am so mad at my self for not being more organized, but lets face it I probably won't get much better.  I am sure our agency has it and we asked them to send it to me but instead they sent the home study that we had done last year.  So we will try again and ask for overnight shipping.  We only have 10 days before our document expires and then we would have to start over with a whole different form that is more complicated and even more money.  Yep that is also me waiting until the last minute.

I am angry that we have to do this again, how many more times do we have to do this?  I just want it to be over.  Even if it is over for just a couple months before we start the process again.  I want to just live our lives free of the adoption process.  I know that adoption will always be a part of our lives but I can not wait until we are not calling or emailing the adoption agency every other day.

Here is the other thing that has me feeling like an emotional ball of tangled yarn.  I sometimes feel that all the choices that we have made during the process have been in the wrong direction.  I feel we did the best with the information that we had at the time but I still feel we should have done things differently.   So I am feeling some anxiety about making the wrong choice about switching countries.  I keep hearing from others that we are so close but what if we aren't?  It is scary and I don't like to be scared. 

So the bottom line.  We are renewing and we are switching countries and it is a gamble and it is scary.  I guess some people play the lottery or go to a casino and gamble we like to do our gambling a slightly different way.  Someday I will see beyond the all the fees and frustration and have a new look at the process but not now because you can never truly get the whole picture when you are smack dab in the middle.