Adoption Progress - or...not...maybe soon?

Hello dear friends! I wanted to take a minute to sit down and capture my thoughts on the progress thus far on the adoption front before I proceed with today.

A little history...we started the adoption process in July 2009 by committing to each other that we were going to pursue adoption to increase our family after learning we were essentially sterile. (so funny...I started off reluctant to say we were infertile, now I usually use the word sterile...which is a slight exaggeration considering we do have one living biological son and theoretically have a 1 bombillionth of a chance of having more). Anyway...we officially started the process by attending an informational meeting in August followed by attending the first PRIDE class we could in October. That finished mid-November, as did most of our paperwork. Waiting for recommendation forms pushed our paperwork completion into December, which then pushed off our homestudy until January due to the holidays (and, lost paperwork as we found out later). So, January 16th, two days after my grandmother died and the day my son and I were set to travel back to LA for her funeral, we had our homestudy.

The homestudy itself was actually pretty innocuous. She showed up slightly late, which usually isn't a big deal to me (everyone knows I can't be on time to save my life...ok, maybe to save my life but not for much else), except when you've already been waiting for this day to come for 2 months it causes you a little bit of a concern when things aren't going as scheduled as it puts in the fear that it will be postponed. Indefinitely. Or that's how it feels. But no worries, I think she called right around the time she was supposed to be at our house to let us know she was running late. So, we relaxed (and maybe cleaned) for a few minutes more before she arrived and the process began. She asked us lots of questions, tried asking the little guy a bit but since she started out with "What is your name?" followed by "What is your birthday"...and couldn't get a good answer to that one, she decided she wouldn't be able to get much more out of him and moved onto questions from us. But, we insisted she ask him his address, since he's known that since he was 15-18 months or so, and so she did. And I don't remember if he played along or not.

The whole homestudy lasted about 3 hours...in PRIDE they prepared us for 6-16. They also prepared us to share EVERYTHING, from our past relationships, to our concerns about children with different types of challenges, race relations type information, and even how often we're intimate as a couple. But, really, I guess we were over prepared to share (I'm pretty open as it is) because we left feeling like we really didn't feel like we had gotten into that level of detail. She thanked us and wished us well as she left. We were left feeling like we did all we could do, we were honest and now it was in God's hands, but couldn't help shake the feeling...maybe it was so short because something we said or something she saw scared her off? I dunno...but she did say she'd turn in her report by the end of the month.

We knew that they had 30 days to make a decision after receiving the homstudy...I don't know why we knew that, but maybe it was something they told us in class or maybe something we made up. I don't know. In any case we made the decision early in the month to not worry about it and just go with the flow. If we didn't hear back from them by the end of February we'd call them in March. We didn't hear back. Today is March 1st. After a meeting in a few minutes I'll stop and call them and check in.

I'm super nervous to do that. There was a super sense of peace in February knowing that we were waiting for them to take the next step, at least in part because although waiting for movement is tough, revealing the unknown can be tougher...at least the fear of revealing the unknown can be tougher! So, right now I'm nervous. I'm nervous that I'll call and they'll say that they lost our paperwork and we'd have to start the waiting again. I'm nervous I won't get a hold of someone. I'm nervous they'll tell us we're not approved for some reason. I'm nervous they'll tell us we're approved and the ball will start rolling fast again. Maybe it's excitement and not nerves. But we have a whole lot in the air right now and we've kind of gotten used to this holding pattern.

Maybe this is what they talk about in terms of waiting gracefully. I don't know. But I think we've come to enjoy just waiting to see what will happen...even if nothing has happened yet. We've certainly learned at least in part that our plans are wonderful, but they don't add up to a hill of beans when it comes to what God has in store. And so, we've waited but now believe it's time for us to make a move in obedience.

Help pray for us today and over time as we continue to move down this path.