An Unexpected Turn of Events

I expected to be posting a bit about how I arrived at this point in my life somehow managing to neither be married or a mother.  Certainly NOT how I envisioned my life when I was in high school doing the "where do you see yourself in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years" assignment.  But, I will come back to this another time.

This week  finds me considering adopting from another country other than China and truthfully I'm excited at having an alternative to consider.  I don't have anything against China by any means.  I have traveled there many times and I have a great love for the people, the culture and of course, the food!  However, it feels pretty restrictive to not have options and being told by the social worker of an adoption agency "China is pretty much your only option" pointed me on a pretty narrow path.  Since that conversation last November I have been dealing with/processing China's expectations for adoptive families:  what seems to ME a pretty high expectation of net worth, their weight guidelines that find me about 20 pounds on the "too bad, you can't adopt" side, and now I'm reading about possible traffic violations guidelines that say you can't have more than 5 violations in 25 years of driving history!  Maybe I'm the only one who gets speeding tickets with an unfortunate regularity but it's possible that I have more than 5 speeding tickets (I know I have at least 4 but I can't remember how many I might have gotten in my 20's!).  I suppose there are ways of dealing with all of these issues...the one that is most clearly in my own hands right now, my weight, is something I'm  working on.  Maybe more on that another time.  But it is pretty discouraging to feel like there are so many hoops to jump through to be considered a worthy parent. 

I have been hoping that maybe Vietnam and/or Cambodia will reopen to U.S. adoptions in the near future.  I have a strong desire to adopt from an Asian country, the reasons why will make yet another future blog post.  I also know that I can't wait forever to adopt, so I'm doing my best to not be the one restricting my own options so I am willing to pray and consider any adoption option that comes my way.  This week I was notified by a different adoption agency that Kyrgyzstan (a small central Asian country) has just reopened to adoptions in the U.S. and this agency is the only agency that is representing Kyrgyzstan.  They expect singles to be able to adopt from Kyrgyzstan and they are working on finding out all of the guidelines before posting them but they do consider this adoption program open.  I have to say, the feeling of having another option to consider is really awesome!  The people of Kyrgyzstan are really beautiful and diverse.  I have never been there but I have been to several of the surrounding countries.  I am a little afraid to be hopeful, as I realize there could be very similar (or even worse?) guidelines applied to adoptions from Kyrgyzstan but for some reason I have a renewed sense of anticipation and excitement.  It feels a little odd to say that, because it wasn't that I was unhappy about the prospect of adopting from China.  Maybe it's a feeling of "could this possibly be a better fit for me?  Could this be where my daughter will be from?"  I guess it will be an interesting few weeks as more information comes in about this option.  I'm excited to see what happens!