"You must abandon the birth mother."

The fight is over. The lawyer uttered the words "you must abandon the birth mother" last night as we simply do not have enough time to complete our paperwork and get registered and approved before the baby is born.

After I hung up with the lawyer, I called the American family in Brasilia to tell them. The wife just could not understand how it worked for them and why it wasn't working for us. I could offer her no real reason because I had no idea.

The wife called our shared lawyer to discuss the situation and the difference in our situations became very clear. This family started their adoption process when the husband was not here on a diplomatic visa. He had a regular working visa which allows a foreigner to claim resident status in Brazil after something like 6 months of being in-country. Even though we've lived in Brazil for nearly 3 years and still have a year to go, we will never be able to claim resident status because we're here on a diplomatic visa. It all boils down to what kind of sticker page we have in our passport. The Brazilian government doesn't take into account how long we've lived here or the resulting affinity we feel for this country.

Our own devastating disappointment and selfishness aside, what's important right now is the baby's welfare. I started attending a Bible Study among friends on Tuesday and the adoption came up. While I was talking about the Brazilian government's insistence on placing newborns with Brazilian families who are apparently lined up in droves, a friend said that was interesting because her husband's Portuguese teacher and her husband have been waiting for 5 years for a baby and still there are babies put into orphanages. I have spoken to the Portuguese teacher this morning and I am hopeful that I can connect her with the birth mother.

As for us, the attorney has talked to a lot of her contacts and she's insistent that we can do the paperwork and get "habilitated" or registered in the system and she can help us adopt a child sooner rather than later. The child won't be a baby, which really is okay for us because we'd like a smaller age gap between Mac and a younger child. So we remain prayerful and hopeful and we're going to start the process.

Through all of this, I have known that there was no certainty or guarantee in this process. It's not like Christmas where you know you'll wake up on December 25 to find a present. I have wrestled with what God's plan was and is for us through all this and I still don't know where this is all going. What I do know is that Jimmy and I thought we'd closed the door on having more children and this has made us realize that we really do want more children and that it is worth fighting to grow our family.

Two days ago, we had decided to pursue international adoption outside of Brazil because both of us were so disgusted by the system here that we couldn't bear to fight it. But after talking to Vera last night, we've decided to put in our paperwork here to try and get habilitated so we can adopt a child from here. Brazil will likely be the place we live the longest in Jimmy's diplomatic career, so to have one of our children be born here would be a special reminder of a country and its people that we do love. We'll keep you posted.