Patience is a virtue

I'm a planner. Yes, I am starting preliminary research for our 2011 summer vacation. Ok, maybe I'm a bit of a control freak. So, I was a bit undone when trying to send James Matthew his first package from us.

Our agency and ICAB both encouraged us to prepare a photo album for our son, showing pictures of each of us, our house, his room, etc. James Matthew's caregivers will use the album to introduce us to him. Hopefully when we travel to see him, he may remember us from the photos.

But yikes - we didn't have his room ready! We were waiting for our referral to see if we were going to be blessed with a boy or a girl and how old the child would be before prepping the room. There was probably some self-preservation in our delay as well. The wait for James Matthew was hard. Walking by an empty child's room with no end in sight would have been harder.

So, during the week prior to Easter, I took some vacation time while Keith and Maggie were at home on spring break so we could work on his bedroom and get the photo album and his birthday gifts in the mail asap. On April 1st, after packing and repacking his package at least 3 times, I headed to the post office - a package in hand and a bundle of nerves. I almost broke down talking to the postman - I was stressed. 6-10 business days until delivery to our agency's office in the Philippines.

In the meantime, I ordered a larger, nicer photo album (the first package contained only a few photos) which I mailed about a week and 1/2 later.

Late one Saturday night we discovered that neither package had arrived in PI. On Sunday morning after church, we scrambled to Target and then to FedEx in an attempt to recreate package #1. After a brief meltdown on the phone with FedEx a week later, we were relieved to discover that package #3 had arrived to our contact in PI. Whew! The package would arrive to James Matthew in time!

The funny thing - ALL 3 packages arrived on the same day. Crazy!

Lesson learned - patience is a virtue. I think I need cede control a bit. I'll try to remember that. Now back to planning that vacation...