How do we do this adoption thing?

Hi everyone! and happy new year! We have been so busy these last couple weeks that I couldn’t imagine getting my thoughts together enough to form another blog entry (can I just say that I hate the word blog…I really do).  However,  I am happy to continue the story and share what happens next.  So in the last post I talked about how we finally said “YES!” to adoption.  It was such a huge moment for us and just when I wanted to sit back and relax in that wonderful decision, we knew there were steps that needed to be taken in order for that dream to be a reality.

We took some advice from friends and met with couples we knew that had gone through adoption themselves.  It was so nice to have   people around us who had gone through adoption, it made and continues to make us feel supported and there is a wonderful peace knowing we can ask them questions whenever we want.  If I hadn’t seen adoption in my every day life through the lives of these people I honeslty don’t know if I would have been as open to adoption as I was. And this is just another wonderful example of what adoption can do for our communites. But I will get more passionate about that later.

Our next step was going to informational meetings and different adoption agencies.  Our first one was 9 hours long, and although I learned every little detail about adoption and the process, we left feeling deflated and insanely overwhelmed.  I don’t think we said much on the way home from that meeting.  I just remember deep breathing and sighing a lot 🙂  The main thoughts going through my head were:

“HOW ARE WE GOING TO GET ALL THAT PAPERWORK DONE?”

“HOW LONG IS THIS WHOLE THING GOING TO TAKE, I WANT A BABY NOW!”

“IN WHAT DREAM WORLD AM I EVER GOING TO BE ABLE TO ACCUMULATE THAT MUCH MONEY TO PAY FOR THIS.”

“IM NOT GROWN UP ENOUGH FOR ALL OF THIS!”

That last one pretty much somes them all up.  Before I entered the adoption world, I thought adoption was mainly for middle aged, wealthy people who had everything together, and we can check none of those boxes.  We knew though that if we waited till we “had everything together”, we would be waiting a lifetime. And so, we took blind steps of faith and started this crazy process.

I was so excited the day we got our homestudy packet. A Homestudy for those who don’t know is a huge pile of paperwork that needs to be completed, along with visits with a social worker to evaluate your ability to parent, and also your living space. I went straight to office max and got all of the folders and labeling products to successfully become as neurotic as possible.  I think this was me trying to gain some physical control over this, and it did make me feel better 🙂  I was hoping the color coded tabs would impress our social worker, I didn’t stop to think that my OCD could be noted at as a personality flaw 🙂 Anwyay, we pushed throught all of the reading, book reports, 13 page autobiographies, fingerprinting, blood work, emergency exit plans, classes, DMV records, CPR and first aid class, and so much more.  Every step closer was awesome.

I think for us the most nerve wrecking part was the one on ones, couple meeting, and the home inspection with our social worker. After all, she was the one who was going to essentially say yes or no to make this thing happen.  I now know how silly it was to be so nervous but we went into those meetings feeling as if every word would be noted and analyzed.  I was especially cautious because I tend to be sarcastic and quippy when I get nervous.  I think I forgot that she was a flawed human just like me, and I was allowed to be imperfect.  While I complained about how much work it was, we did learn a lot from the process, especially all the books we read.

We now had to find a baby to be matched with.  We chose to only use our agency to complete our homestudy and were going to use another organization, referred to us by friends, to help us match with a birth mother.  They had a much quicker matching rate then the agencies do, and we were ready to make this thing happen.

I was in the middle of filling out the packet for that specific organization when we got the call that would turn it all around.  We were on a mini vacation with some of our closest friends when we the call came in. We were presented with the oppurtunity to adopt the baby of a  family member.  She was only a few weeks pregnant and called us the day she found out.  To say I was taken aback would be an understatement.  I felt excited and nauseus at the same time.  Why nauseus you ask? This was not in the plan, we were doing this other thing, I had already put a bunch of work into it, and this was not how I visualized our adoption story happening.  For those who have followed our story up to this point, I think we can all laugh that I thought I was still somewhat in control of how this was going to go down.  And so we changed gears.  We hired a lawyer and started an independent adoption.

We knew we would adopt, and God knew we would adopt.  The difference is that we didn’t know what child that would be, but He did.  From the beginning of time.  Did he say this would be easy? perfect? No. But I believe that it will be worth it.  And because it’s His plan and not ours, we trust it.  I trust this process more than anything because I had little to nothing to do with it. He provided the way for this, even down to finances.   So as we wait for the birth of our son, which is now less then a month away, we sit in anticipation and awe at how this unfolded.  We have a good God, a very very good God.