Paper Baby Goes to Austin.... TWICE

Yesterday was the big day! The plan was to take the day off from work to drive Paper Baby to Austin to be certified. I got an early start and gathered up all the papers I needed, maps from Google, and I was on my way! I managed to miss most of the Austin rush hour traffic and arrived at the Secretary of State's office with no major issues. As you can see from the picture to the right, Paper Baby was so happy to be in the State Capitol of the LONE STAR STATE!!!

I was nervous going into the building, just not knowing what was going to happen or if something would go wrong. Well I guess you could call that "Paper Baby Mother's Intuition" because something did in fact go wrong!

I had brought about 15 documents with me and somehow managed to bring a Xerox copy of our Marriage License/Certificate, rather than original or certified copy. The Secretary of State can't certify a Xerox copy! The Secretary of State lady told me I could mail the correct Marriage License to them but it would take 15 business days to process! (Keep in mind she had just certified 14 other documents in less than 8 minutes, yet anything that arrives via the postal service must go into some other dimension where certification moves at a snail's pace). Not willing to wait 15 business days for one little seal, I went back to my car and had my own little version of the movie Groundhog Day... traveled back down I-35 to Temple, got my document and turned right back around!

If any of you were wondering "How should I spend my day off from work??" let me tell you that driving 250+ miles back and forth between Temple and Austin twice is actually quite a joy, especially given current gas prices! ;) Luckily I had nice weather to drive in and never got caught in any gnarly Austin traffic.

Surprisingly, I wasn't that upset about doing two round trips to Austin. I had made a mistake with the paperwork because, "Surprise! I'm human!", and it was FIXABLE. All I had to go was go home to fix it - I didn't have to wait on the government to issue me a new certificate, or apply to get some new piece of paper, or be dependent on anyone else to fix my mistake.

I think I was also not upset because at this point doing anything for Paper Baby seems worth it. I feel like I'm at a point where if they tell me to jump I'd say "How high?" because we just want this child so very much.

After everything was certified, it looked like this ... I took a picture for Bryan so he could understand what "certification" looked like. So for those of you non-adoptive-families reading this blog, here's an educational moment about the State Seal of Texas:

The Secretary of State ladies (who by now knew me by name and got a real chuckle out of my drive-to-Austin-two-times-in-3-hours predicament) told me that there was a UPS store just two blocks away. Perfect! I didn't want to parallel park again in downtown Austin and the weather was beautiful. I began my trek to UPS with the reality that Paper Baby was about to go on a voyage hitting me like a ton of bricks.

Sandwiched in between the Secretary of State's office and UPS was St. Mary's Cathedral, a huge and beautiful old church. I consider this to be no coincidence - and given the fact that this adoption is the biggest leap of faith I've ever taken - I went inside to spend some time in prayer before I mailed Paper Baby off.

I didn't expect this step to hit me like it did. It made me realize that our work in the adoption journey is basically done. Mailing Paper Baby off for processing marks the end of our control and responsibility in the process. At this point, everything is in the hands of our agency, our government, the Kyrgyzstan government. That stack of papers is the only tangible connection we have to the begininng of our child's life, and it is now a very big reality that our child has a beginning somewhere on the other side of the world. We pray that our child's beginning is healthy, happy, full of love... and that if it isn't we are able to bring healing, joy and love to our child's life.

I had been really good at saying I had put all this process in God's hands but the reality is that it didn't happen until yesterday in that church. It felt important to give Paper Baby - which in many ways represents our hopes and dreams of having a family - to God before I gave it to UPS!

Oh and just in case you are wondering, I am tracking Paper Baby across the nation obsessively... He's in Kentucky right now, probably about to board the big plane to California!!! :)