Step by Step

Does anyone else remember that old Rich Mullins’ song?

 

Oh God, You are my God
And I will ever praise You
I will seek You in the morning
And I will learn to walk in Your ways
And step by step You'll lead me
And I will follow You all of my days

I love that song… and although I haven’t heard it in a long time, it is what came to mind today as I was thinking about writing this next blog installment.  I guess I was just focused on the “one step at a time” aspect of things and my mind made the jump.  Go figure!

Well, that pretty much sums things up right now.  Not a lot happening in adoption land, but we are moving forward … slowly … one step at a time.  Last Monday, Valentine’s Day no less, we received both USCIS appointment letters telling Dan and I when and where to appear to be fingerprinted.  Although we have both already submitted three fingerprint cards as part of our home study process, two for the state of Maryland and one for the FBI, the immigration department requires us to be fingerprinted by their offices as well.  Our appointment was scheduled for 8 a.m. on March 8 at the Baltimore USCIS Application Service Center.

 

Good to know, though we really had no intention of waiting until the eighth of March to continue on our journey.  See, that appointment letter is “golden” in that it really is just your ticket in the door.  Yes, you can show up at your schedule appointment time and be fingerprinted with no problem, but it is not unheard of (rather, quite common in fact) for adoptive parents to show up before that appointment date and talk their way into an early fingerprinting session.  And that is exactly what we had in mind.

So… thanks to this weekend being a three-day weekend, and thanks to the fact that Dan’s office doesn’t take three day weekends, and thanks to the fact that Dan’s office takes four day weekends instead, Dan and I were both available for a quick trip to Baltimore on Friday afternoon.   So, after entrusting our three preschool children to our wonderful baby-sitting neighbor, we headed off to Baltimore to sweet talk our way into an appointment.

As it turned out, absolutely no sweet talk was necessary.  When we entered the ASC office there was absolutely no one in the waiting area and we walked directly to the service counter.  I had told Dan on the way in that he was going to do all the talking, but it turned out he didn’t really have to say much at all.  The lady behind the counter asked if we had an appointment.  Dan answered, “No, but we have these.”  The nice lady then looked at our letters and replied, “You have appointments… just not for today.”  Luckily, she said this with a smile.  And better yet, she followed the remark by checking us in and handing us the forms we needed to fill out.  Yeah!  This was easy!

It took us each about two minutes to fill in the short information sheet and return to the desk.  We did have to wait as another family was checking in, but that only took a couple of minutes.  Then we were each handed a number and told to move to the other side of the waiting area until our numbers were called.  That took so long that neither one of us even got to sit down.  As soon as we crossed the room our numbers appeared on the call board and we were led back to the fingerprint scanners.  We both did our part of allowing the technicians to place and roll our fingers correctly, filled out our customer service surveys and were out the door.  Entrance to exit – approximately 10 minutes!

Now that is the way to get things done!  Neither one of us can take any credit for actually getting our fingerprints done so quickly, but it sure felt good walking out of that building.  Finally something went right and didn’t have some dumb Murphy’s Law aspect to it.  I believe my parting words as we left the building were, "Wow!  My prayer warriors are GOOD!"  Of course we still aren’t done, we have to wait for those fingerprints to be processed and for our final approval letter to arrive, but we are definitely one step closer.  Make that one BIG step closer.  And that ain’t too shabby!

And I will seek You in the morning
And I will learn to walk in Your ways
And step by step You'll lead me
And I will follow You all of my days

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him and He will make your paths straight.”  Proverbs 3:5-6

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 4:6-7