Just keep swimming...Just keep swimming

This week we received our homestudy approval! My heart smiles when I think we are that much closer to adding our little guy to our family.
As I reflect over our process up  to this point, it's been very minimal in terms of time , in comparison to other family stories we've heard and I feel conflicted. Joyful for our particular process, but also i feel heartache for the families who have already waited so long and invested so much... joyful in hope and patient in affliction.
It's interesting how affliction can take on so many forms. There's mixture of anger and frustration. The number of kiddos without families is so massive why does the process have to be so time consuming and tedious? Why do so many kids have to suffer loss and lack of connectedness at the hand of a system that is flawed.
It's hard for me to stop looking at the waiting children postings, wanting to bring many of them back with us. Again I feel a sting of pain over the brokenness; broken families, broken hopes, broken hearts. The process of making beauty out of ashes, bringing hope out of hopelessness,  and wholeness out of brokenness is something that goes against the natural order of things, something that is supernatural, something only God can do.
So we will continue to be faithful through this process. Taking the next steps to bring our baby home. And maybe this will stir something in the hearts of our biological kids. A heart for China maybe, a heart for others, a bigger version of the world than what they see and a deeper sense of provision and trust  in a God they know to be real and in whom they can trust with their everything.