2012

Reality is setting in for this girl. The reality that waiting is like hearing a slow drip somewhere in your walls that you can't do anything about unless you tear open your walls and start searching. Sometimes it's just better to wait and see if you see a sign of where the problem is. But it doesn't mean you don't go crazy waiting!

I know that this part of waiting (homestudy) is NOTHING compared to the wait after we've met our kids and before we pick them up for home.

In the last few weeks, I've been thinking and praying about if this is what we're supposed to do. Not adoption. I feel confident in that. But how and where we're adopting.

Doubt is a funny thing. It can consume you or you can take hold of it, take it to the Father and he can either reassure you of something or change your way completely. So that's what I'm doing. As a woman, I feel I have to do this more so than Martin. It's not that he isn't part of the process, it just that I probably think about a million times more on something than he does. Oh to be a man sometimes *sigh*

One friend told me last week that adoption is WAY harder than being pregnant. She has done both and I should trust her but I like to think that my mood swings and emotional eating would be far worse if I had a human living and growing inside of me. Then there's the c-section horror stories (I'm talking to you Jayme and April G!). I'm just going to think that this is the better route for me. Of course God never promised anything easy, just that I won't be alone.

Happy New Year.

Still Waiting

We're still waiting on our homestudy to be finished. Which means we're just hanging out, enjoying Christmas and trusting that God is allowing it for whatever reason he wants.

Merry Christmas if I don't blog on here until then!

Words of Another

I've had quite the comments this week from different people about our adoption process. Some good. Some not so good. I read a girl's blog post yesterday. I agree with about 90% (of what I know so far). Cried through the whole thing. It was like fresh water on a dry soul.

The part I don't agree with? Where she says that adopted children weren't preordained before the beginning of time to be our children. Yes, they were. God didn't look at the sin Adam committed and rush around to go to "plan b" he knew that fruit would be taken and eaten. He knew death would happen. He knew we would all be born deserving to die. Yet, for his glory (something none of us can comprehend) he allowed it anyway. All to show a beautiful story of redemption from a God who loves himself so much. And because he loves himself, he loves us and gave us a way to him through Jesus. So yeah, these children were designed to be mine. Adam didn't mess up the fact that my kid's birth parents aren't going to be able to care for them. It's a hard pill to swallow and makes the gospel and God even more scandalous in our tiny little pee brains. But thanks be to God for his salvation and his Helper to bring things to light cause if it wasn't for that, it looks like we believe in something crazy (and to the world, we do).

You can read it here.

Fingerprinting - Check.

Here we are outside the fingerprinting shop? store? facility?

Okay, welp the fingerprinting for the adoption is D.U.N. done.

It went off without a hitch. Okay, I'm lying. We drove separately to the fingerprinting place so we could both go straight to work afterwards. We were the dude's first clients? patients? customers? He asked for our paperwork and I gave him our confirmation papers I printed off the internet when I scheduled and paid for them. Those were not the papers that he wanted. FAIL.

He was very gracious but told us we had to have the papers that the agency gave us. No problem, they are probably sitting on my dining room table in the pile of paperwork, thirty minutes away.

I must say that Martin was VERY merciful. I probably would have steamed the whole way home if it had been his fault. It was a great lesson in mercy. We had a nice drive home then back again. We even ran over a garbage can and carried it down the road with us for a bit. But that's what you do when you have a Jeep Wrangler apparently.

Once we got back, our fingerprinting experience took three minutes each. Part of me wishes he would have hummed and hawed over us to make it seem worthwhile but Martin had a conference call at 10 AM and we walked out at 9:55 AM.

God is good. And funny. And merciful. And never boring.

It is Finished!

I feel really weird writing the last words of Jesus before he died on the cross but my statement is true.

Our homestudy is finished. Or maybe I should say that our homestudy meetings are finished. We met with Missy three times in the past month and she, in fact did ask us everything but our underwear size but she has such a sweet way of doing it!

We both have to get our FBI fingerprinting done (October 25), our physicals done (mine October 10 and Martin's November 1) and send her our financial records. I completed those yesterday so we'll say they are 99.6% finished. The 0.4% is me actually writing out Missy's name on an envelope and putting them in the outgoing mail at work (which I'll do tomorrow).

Missy told us that this was the hardest part of the adoption. It feels weird to be finished with the hardest part. Honestly, it wasn't that hard. But the anticipation of it was.

OR maybe I'm looking at it like those silly ladies who go through terrible labor (is there good labor, Sarah? Really?) and say it really wasn't that bad. I'm not sure.

What's our next steps you ask? Well, I'll give you a run down (as I know it - I find out new details all the time).

1. Turn in (with $1,000 0r so) our I600A to the State Department. This tells them that we are getting ready to send in our paperwork to the Ethiopian government.
2. Turn in our agency paperwork and the $3,000 fee. We waited until after our homestudy to send this fun stuff in.
   
3. Turn in our dossier to Ethiopia (with about $10,000). This can't happen until our fingerprints are cleared and our I600A has been processed through the State Department (get on that Hilliary!).
4. WE WAIT.......................................................
5. (While we're waiting patiently, the dossier-which is basically a big packet of paperwork, has to be translated into Amharic then it is processed and once approved, given to the orphanage our agency works with.)
6. They will then find a match for what we're looking for (a baby, 0-2 yrs and siblings up to 4 years old).
   
7. Once we're matched we will go to our doctor with the medical reports and see if the match is what we requested. If everything looks okay, we'll look at the pictures of our kids. (if not, we're allowed to send back the match and ask for another - but not without crazy prayer).
8. Then we wait for a court date.
9. Once our court date is appointed Martin and I will fly to Ethiopia to meet our kiddos and go to court.
   
10. If we pass, we'll go back in a few months to pick them up. If we don't pass, we wait for them to get the correct paperwork and pray we pass the next time (but we don't have to go back for that one).
11. Get approval to pick them up!

It looks like a lot but so much of it is out of our hands. Once we are finished with the paperwork, it's up to the government and orphanage to do the rest.

I have to admit. I'm in a different state of mind this week. I'm sure it will subside a bit but I'm in expectant mode. I've even thought Is it too early to get a crib and a toddler bed or two? Yes, yes it is.

I finally feel like we're getting somewhere. And what a great feeling that is. God is good.

Mean Friends and Homestudy Papers

Welp, my homestudy paperwork is finished. We received it and I quickly filled out everything I needed to and put it in the mail the next day.

LIES!

I did work on it and I did put it in the mail but there was about oh, let's say a month in between the two. Shame on me!

Here's the skinny. I received the papers in the mail mid-July and I got to working on them. When I say you have to write down everything but your underwear size I'm not kidding except you do have to put your weight so technically they could figure out your underwear size. And that weight thing, boy did I want to put down 135 lbs. I did not. I almost put down "135 lbs (in a year, I promise)" but I felt this was not the time to be funny. That will come soon, I'm sure (the weight loss and the time for me to be funny).

I filled out most of the papers and then I made a list of things I needed to look for. They were simple things like passport numbers, marriage license number, drivers licenses numbers, siblings addresses, list of our assets and liabilities. You know, things that if I had a live-in personal assistant I could make her (or him) do for me **someday, sigh** Sorry, I got lost in dreamland for a minute.

I then proceeded to place my list and unfinished paperwork on the end of our new sectional couch, down where only our feet usually go (the place down near the T.V.) (and no those are not my legs but the legs of Martin) (cute pillows right? Got them at Pier One but the only bad thing about them is they are not snuggle worthy so I need to get a few more, you know the kind you can drool on when sleeping and just throw in the wash before anyone sees) (pillows are so expensive these days).


A week went by and the papers eventually were moved from a visual site to a non-visual site (under the pillow). Then another week went by and I remembered that I needed to finish the paperwork but I was lazy. When I was asked by Mrs. Russo who came over for dinner last week, I gave some excuses and I got no sympathy. There was lots of love (always lots of love) but no, "Oh I know how busy you must be. You poor thing. I think your husband should get you a personal assistant" talk. It was hard love, more like, "WE NEED TO GET THOSE BABIES HOME, THIS IS NOT A GAME! GO! GO! GO! GO!"

Then Sunday came. And I walk into church and handed Kellyanne her Pampered Chef order and instead of oohing and ahhing over the stuff she got she asked why I had not gotten my paperwork in. How did she know? I was thinking (stupid Facebook). I mean, I keep my sin of laziness way under wraps usually. I tried to give some good excuse but it didn't work and she yelled, yes yelled at me. She then proceeded to announce to her Sunday school class that I needed prayer for my laziness. She asked if they would pray for me to get the paperwork finished so that my children could come home. And I thought, man, I gotta get some friends who don't love me that much and will only tell me how great I look and that I have a super hard life here in America where I have everything I need at my fingertips.

By Tuesday night, I had the paperwork finished and took it to work with me, printed some papers off and put it in the mail.

The next morning I woke up and there was a sense of relief and excitement. And the Holy Spirit said to me, This is what obedience feels like. And I smiled and asked Him not to let me forget how good it truly is.

Paper Workin'

Monday night's here at our house have become adoption paperwork night. I've gotten to the point where I have a ton of half filled out papers and I need to call the social worker so we can get the homestudy started. I wasn't expecting it to begin so soon but it is.

Both of our passports expired last year and we need to get them renewed. Two checks for $110 and two mug shots later, the envelopes are filled out and ready to go.

An email to our potential homestudy lady has been sent and this wraps up our adoption paperwork night.

Sorry for the boring post but this stuff is kinda boring. Deal.