Good News to Share

On March 8, 2011 at 2:16 p.m. my cell phone rang while I was at the office.

It was from Children's Hope International, our adoption agency in St. Louis, MO., and I got a little scared. I didn't want to answer the call. This was one of those moments in life that you have been anxiously waiting to arrive. When it is staring at you in the form of a call on your cell phone's i.d. waiting for you to answer, you question how prepared you are for the inevitable next moments.

When I answered, our social worker Nichole greeted. me. "I have some good news." Our dossier was approved by Colombia, she said. The dossier is essentially our entire lives on paper. Medical records. Tax returns. Photos of our family and house. Referral letters from friends. Fingerprints and background checks. Mini-biographies. Notarized psychological reports. And several other items that would take their own blog post to include.

After all these months of paperwork and notaries, Colombia accepted our dossier without any additional requests. Yeahhhhhhhhhhh! :  )

Of course, for us what seems like such a long and slow process is actually incredibly fast by comparison to the process for non-Colombian families. Since I am from Colombia, the government treats us as a Colombian family and the waiting period is shorter.

Different types of emotions ran through my mind. I was crying but at the same time I was happy to hear the good news. We were finally on Colombia's official waiting list to receive a child.

"How do you feel," Nichole asked.

"I'm really happy to hear this news," I replied. "This is really exciting."

"Well, I may have some other good news for you," she said. "It looks like Colombia may already have something waiting for you."

I said, "What do you mean?"

"It looks like they may already have a baby for you guys," Nichole said.

"What?" I exclaimed, and at that point I was in shock.

"If this is true, then you would be the first couple to get the approval and the referral at the same time," Nichole said.

I was crying and wanted to get a lot more details about the baby but she didn't have any additional news to share.

"You need to get your feet back down to earth because you have a lot of paper work that needs to be filled out," she said, before explaining some of the next steps. I could only think about the fact Brian was traveling in Atlanta and wasn't able to share this moment with me in person.

She asked me when Brian would return. "You better keep your phone nearby because I can call you at any time with some more information."

To be continued....