MY HEAD HURTS

My head doesn't physically hurt-but it has been spinning so much lately that I need a break from this emotional roller coaster of adoption (let me clarify---I don't want a break from the adoption itself, just the "waiting purgatory," as someone very accurately deemed it). 

There are so many more similarities that I see every week between being pregnant and being stuck in this purgatory of waiting for another country to coordinate with the US so that we may be granted approval to travel. 

Today I would like to address the fact that I feel as though I have a pregnancy-hormone imbalance.  The emotions I feel on any given day can range from: 

• Intense despair (when I think about what this little girl is going to have to go through when she is wrenched away from her foster family, from the only family she has known since she was 4 months old, and thrown with these crazy white people who don't speak a word of Chinese-that is a hard language to master, let me say just for the record)
• Hope (that we can give her a good life full of love and craziness, a better future, potential, possibilities, freedom.  and a Disney trip here and there...)
• Fear (will we be good parents?  can we handle months/years of grieving, bonding and attachment issues?  how will this affect our present family?  will she ever LIKE us??  will she have night terrors?  will she like Sam?  (kidding-who DOESN'T like Sam) and the big one: so now I really will have to cook even MORE...ugh) 
• Complete and utter excitement (she is ours.  we are hers.  forever!  we are doing her room.  bought her some clothes.  ANOTHER GIRL!!!  read all the recommended books to help with grieving, bonding, attachment, general international adoption "stuff."  we are having a 4th!!!  have I mentioned how CUTE she is???)
  
• Anxiousness and anxiety (when will we get TA?  when will our consulate appointment be?  when will we travel?  why can't anyone give me a date-week-month-anything-some kind of estimate of WHEN we will go?!!??!??  will the Canton Trade Fair screw up our timeframe?  will we get decent flights and have a little space on the flight??  is something going to go wrong?  I have to fly - over the ocean - a looooong way over the ocean...  will I get to China (and live through the flight, first) and have the wrong paperwork, and totally screw this up?  will China suddenly stop adoptions tomorrow?  will our agency go bankrupt before we complete the process?  (no indications of such-but our first agency did, right at a critical point and we had to re-do all of our paperwork, so this is a justified anxiety, in my opinion) will I be organized enough to have all the docs I need and do the right thing at the right time?  how about that ride home with a 46 month old who will probably still hate me for wrenching her from the only family she's known...???)
• Faith. I have to trust that if we feel this strongly about anything, God is leading us and it is just meant to be.  And all will be just fine.  Maybe not next month, maybe not in a couple months-but at some point, she'll adjust, and we'll adjust, and it will be amazing.  And that gives me peace.

However, each time I feel peace, I run through all the above 5 emotions first. :)