Laugh or Cry? Which Type Are You?

Personally, I don’t know how people do it.  I don’t understand how people without faith in Christ make it through the day when things get rough.  How do they survive?  How does that things-are-overwhelming feeling not just eat them alive?  I’m not trying to be flippant, I seriously do not understand.  And it makes me a little sad for them.  I know that today was not the best of my life, but I also know that with every song of faithfulness that played on my ipod or car radio I received another boost of you-can-do-this-ness as I was reminded of God’s faithfulness and constant presence.  I don’t want to even think about how much more this day would have crushed my spirit if I did not have Him to fall back on – or more honestly, to fall into the hands of.  And, honestly, I pray that I never find out.

So, I guess you are wondering what happened, huh?  Well, to set one thing straight, the rottenness of my day’s outing had nothing to do with the weather.  For those of you not in the Maryland area – we awoke to unexpected snow this morning, followed by a full day of continuous rain and sleet amidst a daytime high temperature of roughly 34 degrees.  Not exactly good “Journey into our nation’s capitol” weather, but since I spent most of my travel time on the Metro (subway) it really wasn’t too bad after the initial early morning drive to the train station.  My troubles instead came from messed up paperwork.  Again.  Ugh!

First, let me explain a bit of the process so that today’s events will make more sense.  In order to put together a dossier (packet of required paperwork) to be sent to China, there is a list of forms and letters that must be completed or requested by the adopting family. These include physical exam clearances, police report clearances, proof of employment letters, a financial statement, etc.  Each of these documents must then be notarized to prove their legitimacy. Then, each of these notaries must be certified to document their legitimacy.  Lucky for us we live in Maryland which is one of the states that requires this certification to be completed at the county level, by the County Clerk’s office, as well as at the state level by the Secretary of State.  Also, lucky for us (can you hear my sarcasm?), Maryland is one of a handful of states that must have the state certification authenticated by the U.S. Secretary of State Department as well before said paperwork can be submitted to the Chinese Embassy for their certification, the ultimate goal.  Only after all of these hoops have been jumped through is the original document finally ready for inclusion in the dossier packet which will be sent to the China Center of Adoption Affairs.

So, today my mission was to visit the U.S. Secretary of State Department and have our nine dossier documents authenticated. (FYI – There will eventually be ten of these documents as the immigration approval form we are waiting on completes the set and will have to go through the same process.)   The Secretary of State Department website states that they are open for walk-in authentication requests on a while-you-wait basis from 7:30-11:00 a.m., so my plan was to arrive at their office at 7:30.  I wanted to be one of the first in line, finish quickly, and then head back home.  That was the plan.

The first wrinkle in this plan came at 5 o’clock this morning when one of Dan’s soldiers called to see if Dan would be canceling PT (physical training) due to the 3 inches of snow on the ground.  Wow!  Not expecting that!  It was supposed to rain last night and today, thus I had packed all of my paperwork in a plastic folder inside my waterproof backpack, but I hadn’t planned on snowy roads.  Once I got up and checked the news, however, it didn’t seem like a show stopper, just a bit of a slow-down, so I headed out about 6:20.  I knew I would never make my hoped for 6:45 train, but I wasn’t too worried about it, and actually getting to D.C. wasn’t too bad.  The driving was slow going, but once I got to the train station that wasn’t an issue anymore and I arrived at the Office of Authentications about 8:45.  Then the fun began.

I turned in all nine of my documents to be authenticated and the very nice lady behind the counter took them away.  About 10 minutes later, a very nice man brought them back out and explained to me that 5 of them were okay and ready to be authenticated but the remaining four documents could not be authenticated because the County Clerk’s office had certified them with the wrong notary’s name.  The certified form actually had the wrong notary’s name and commission date on it.  Excuse me?  How does that happen?  Isn’t the point of certifying the notary to check the name and make sure the person is a true and valid notary?  How exactly do you screw that up?!  Well, apparently you can, and she did.  And the Maryland Secretary of State Department representative didn’t notice when she certified it either.   Aaarrrrrgggghhhhh!!

Well, the very nice man (I am not being sarcastic there) tried to help me out by referring me to a notary they had there in the office and explaining that I could re-notarize everything there in D.C. and thus “fix” the problem.  This fix, however, would require me to remove all of the Maryland certification paperwork from the notarized forms, have everything re-notarized by a D.C. notary, and then recertified at a different government office about four blocks away.  A possible solution, yes, but given our track record with all of the crazy Murphy’s Law things that have happened with our paperwork, I just did not feel comfortable taking the Maryland seals off of our Maryland paperwork and thus risking the Chinese Embassy kicking it back to us because of the D.C. certifications on Maryland forms.  So… I decided to simply have the five “okay” documents authenticated today, take the others home with me so that I could carry them back to the County Clerk’s office in Annapolis and hopefully have them fix their mistake.  Luckily, yes this time I am serious, there were actually six of the documents that were okay and only three with the wrong name certified so that made me 67% successful.  Oh yeah!

And so I began my journey home… back through the rain to the train station.  Back through the subway tunnels to my car.  Back down the now slushy roads to our house.  And back to my loving neighbor/babysitter to arrange a plan for my afternoon journey to Annapolis.  Yippee!  See, lots of excitement, really not much of it caused by the weather.  :)

Well, after feeding the girls lunch and shoveling snow off our sidewalk and driveway I was back in the car, this time heading east.  When I arrived at the County Clerk’s office the first person I spoke to pretty much looked at me like I was crazy.  I explained to her that I had had the notaries certified there and that they were completed with the wrong notary’s name but the idea of such a thing was so ludicrous that I’m pretty sure she didn’t believe me at first.  But then she looked at the forms and promptly showed them to another employee asking how to fix the mistake.  That employee, who quickly acknowledged this was a stupid mistake, said that they simply needed to look up the commission for the correct notary and then reprint the certification form.  Simply.  Ha!  If only any of this could be simple.  Turns out, it’s not that easy.  Shocker, huh?

Would you believe that in the middle of all of this the commission of the true notary, the one whose name should have been certified the first time, expired.  Yep.  Expired.  Now, she had it renewed so she is still a notary, but the only commission date they keep on file in the County Clerk’s office is the current commission date so for them to certify her signature today the commission date they would include on the form would not align with the date she actually notarized our paperwork.  Basically, the form would read that she notarized our form in October of 2010, but wasn’t commissioned until November of 2010.  A simple matter of renewal dates and logistics, but enough to make the whole paper look suspect, something we definitely do not need at this point.

So, here we are.  With three of our dossier documents completed, notarized, sort-of county certified, state certified and completely worthless.  Aaarrrrrgggghhhhh!!  Oh wait, did I already say that?  Sorry to be redundant.  Grrrrrrrrrr!  Is that better?  Ha!

Luckily, yes I really mean it this time too, all three of these documents are items that Dan and/or I completed and signed before the notary so we can easily reprint them, resign them, and go through the whole notary/certification process (and fees!) with them again.  Easy as driving back to Annapolis that is.  And, luckily this issue was caught by the very helpful and conscientious employees at the Secretary of State Department now rather than by China later.  And luckily I took these forms to D.C. today rather than waiting for our completed immigration form and thus putting everything on hold while we fixed the mistake.  The truth is, this could have been much worse.  If any of these forms had been completed by someone other than us, or the issue had been discovered once the documents made it to the Chinese Embassy or CCAA, our whole process could have come to a screeching halt.  As it is, we can redo the paperwork and rework the process while we are waiting on USCIS anyway.  So, I guess I should count my lucky stars as my grandmother used to say – or perhaps just drown my sorrows in a few of the chocolate chip cookies I came home and baked.

But then I am taken back to my opening thought.  How do unbelievers do this?  How would I have gotten through the day without totally losing my mind if I didn’t have Someone much bigger and much wiser to fall back on and trust.  As I told a friend earlier today it seems like the theme of this adoptioin journey is quickly becoming “one step forward, two steps back”.  Then I am reminded that God never promised things would be easy.  As a matter of fact, in Isaiah He pretty much promises we will have days like this.  But He also promises we don’t have to face them alone. 

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
   I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters,
   I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
   they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
   you will not be burned;
   the flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the LORD your God,
   the Holy One of Israel, your Savior

Isaiah 43:1b-3a

I know God knows the ultimate plan. And I trust Him, I really do.  But today was one of those days when I just had to decide – do I laugh or do I cry?  Do I trust or do I doubt?  Luckily, I think I made the right choices.  I chose to laugh in the Office of Authentications while rolling my eyes, shaking my head, and leaving a very long message on Dan’s voicemail.  I chose to shut my eyes and feel the tears of frustration come and go while riding the Metro.  I prayed for strength and sang along with Mark Schultz’s God of Glory in the car while driving to and from Annapolis.  And then I spent my evening blogging about how faithful my God is even in the midst of the most ridiculously frustrating situations.  I don’t know what your choices would have been, but this sounds about right to me.  And it also sounds like it might be time for one more cookie.  :)