Defending Love

It’s a BIG Day!

Today is a huge day in the life of our family. Today is the day that we meet Joshua and Debra and start moving forward with visitation that will lead up to them moving in with us! Wow…I can’t believe that we are actually HERE. I’m still a little bit stunned. It’s odd for me [...]

What Is Going On?

It’s been several months since I’ve posted an update about our adoption plans. I’ve thought about posting a few times, but it never seemed that there was anything worth reporting so I’ve been silent. Throughout this process, I’ve learned a lot, and one thing I learned quickly is that it’s better to not be public [...]

The Great Unknown

Have you ever felt like you are standing on the edge of a cliff? It has been settled in your heart that you are going to jump, in fact your toes are hanging over the side but you haven’t taken that final leap? That would be us right about now. When we decided to officially [...]

Who’s Report Should We Believe?

We met with our Social Worker this past week again and are coming to the end of our licensing classes this week. There are a few more documents to gather, another set of fingerprints to submit and then if everything goes well, we should have our home study completed sometime in May. This is exciting [...]

Lessons About Loss

As part of the preparation for our adoption we are participating in 30 hours of classes through our adoption agency. These classes are designed to help us learn about some of the unique needs children who could be placed with us may have and help us learn how to parent them. My initial response to [...]

It’s a BIG Day!

October 11th, 2011

Tracy

Today is a huge day in the life of our family. Today is the day that we meet Joshua and Debra and start moving forward with visitation that will lead up to them moving in with us! Wow…I can’t believe that we are actually HERE. I’m still a little bit stunned.

It’s odd for me to look back and take in how much has changed for us in the last year. It was October of 2010 when I started hearing the Lord talk to me about adoption. It was about 6 weeks after that before I talked to ANYONE about it (including my husband). And it was around Christmas time that we decided as a family that this was something we wanted to do. In 10 months time that dream that felt far off and big has become a reality – and it’s hard to take it all in!

I’ll be honest with you….I’m both excited and incredibly nervous walking into today. I didn’t sleep well last night. I was awake for the day at 5:30 am. There is a way that I can’t wait to meet these kids and start getting to know them, and there is a way that it feels scary. Right now, they are strangers to us and we are strangers to them – and we are about to head into a future where they will become a permanent part of our life. It’s the strangest emotion. I recognize some of the same feelings that I experienced before the birth of both of my children, but it’s also totally different. These two kids have an entire history that doesn’t include us, and we have a history that doesn’t include them. I’m hopeful that our commitment to a future that includes us all is enough to overcome that lack of shared history – but I realize it’s going to take time. I wonder a lot if these are normal emotions? I wonder what they are feeling?

For those who are wondering about what this transition is going to look like, here is the plan for the next couple of weeks:

Tonight Brian and I will go to the Foster Parent’s home to meet the kids. We met the Foster Mom last week and REALLY liked her. I think she will be a tremendous advocate for us in this process. The visit tonight will not include our current children.
On Saturday Joshua and Debra will come to our house for a visit during the day. This is the visit where all 4 of the kids will meet for the first time and spend time together. We will have another daytime visit at our home on Sunday after church.
We will likely have a brief visit or two during the evening once or twice next week but have not made solid plans yet for that.
The weekend of October 22nd will be the first overnight visit for the kids to our house. We are planning on taking all 4 kids to the NC State Fair on Saturday and then on Sunday we will go to church together.
From that point on, if it’s going well, we will likely have the kids every weekend overnight and continue shorter weeknight visits.
Once we move into November and evaluate how the kids are adjusting we will set a date for them to move in – tentatively we are shooting for at or before Thanksgiving. A lot will depend on their comfort level and how they are handling the transition.

And that’s where we are right now. We have a “roadmap” for the next couple of weeks, but beyond that there are a lot of question marks! I think we are as prepared as we can be on this side of it, honestly.

We would love your prayers as we walk through the next few weeks and months. We are aware that this isn’t going to be a perfect process and that there will be some bumps in the road. While we aren’t expecting it to be perfect, we are filled with expectation about what is ahead for our family – We believe it’s going to be good and we believe that God is going with us through this journey.

What Is Going On?

September 22nd, 2011

Tracy

It’s been several months since I’ve posted an update about our adoption plans. I’ve thought about posting a few times, but it never seemed that there was anything worth reporting so I’ve been silent. Throughout this process, I’ve learned a lot, and one thing I learned quickly is that it’s better to not be public about any “progress” that is happening until it’s a sure thing….because things can stall out completely and will change often. The summer season has been one of waiting.

To be clear, I’ve been fine with the waiting. I settled in my heart a long time ago that I wasn’t going to force it. I don’t have to add more children into my life to fill things up and feel complete. What God is doing through this adoptions is much bigger than what I can see right now and I’m along for the ride – wherever it happens to take us. So, in a nutshell, we just kind of sat back and moved on with life for the last 4 months when nothing was happening.

BUT…(isn’t there always a but?) I did spend some time wondering about my ability to hear the Lord’s voice clearly. Do you remember this post – the one where I talked about two specific kids that I had felt a sense of urgency about? We followed through with pursuing them by sending our paperwork in, but in the end we never heard a word back about them. It was a little bit confusing because I had been sure that God spoke to me clearly about these specific kids. When we didn’t hear back, I wondered if I had heard correctly, which makes you wonder about your ability to hear correctly in other situations too!

Over the last couple of months we have considered other kids and we have sent our paperwork in to be considered for several. In one situation we were narrowed down to one of 2-3 families that were being considered for a set of identical twin girls who were 11 years old. I was open to the process and totally willing to keep pursuing it until the door was shut, but I never felt the same sense of certainty that I felt with those other two kids. In the end, we were not chosen for the twins and my heart was in complete agreement.

Fast forward to the very end of August. We received an email from our Social Worker that the team for the kids we pursued in May wanted to meet with us. They had been having trouble finding the “right” family for these kids and now wanted to speak to us about them. I was excited, but careful to not get my hopes up, because I’ve learned how little control we have over this process! We told very few people because things were so up in the air and uncertain.

On September 12th, right after returning from our family vacation, we met with the team for this 8 year old girl and 6 year old boy. We spent about 2 hours talking about them and answering a lot of questions about our family. The team for the kids is being understandably cautious about carefully selecting the family that will meet their needs best and be their “forever family”. They had a lot of questions for us surrounding the issue of race and culture because these two kids have an African heritage (birth family is from Nigeria) and the little boy also has some Hispanic heritage (Dad has not been in his life but was Hispanic). They needed to know how we would keep their cultural and racial identity intact while still loving them and integrating them into our family. These are GREAT questions that I’ve spent a lot of time considering. My answer to the team was that we have every intention of preserving and valuing their cultural and racial heritage but that we would have to learn the best ways to do that as we went along – because we don’t know how to do that well on this side of things.

All throughout this process I’ve guarded my heart and the hearts of our kids carefully by not getting too far ahead of right where we are at in this moment. Following the meeting I felt a sense of “This is right and this is good” but didn’t allow myself to go down the road of what it would look like because again, the decision doesn’t belong to us. It took about a week and a half for their team to come to a conclusion and get back to us and I was uncharacteristically calm and relaxed about it!

Yesterday morning we received an email that they wanted to pursue moving forward with our family as a placement for Joshua and Debra. They would like to meet with us in person to work out a visitation/transition plan and to discuss in a little more depth some of the specific details. This meeting will happen on October 4th. Following the meeting, we will likely begin scheduling visits with the kids that will gradually increase in length and frequency until we reach overnight and weekend visits. Once we establish that all is going well and everyone is in agreement that the placement is best for everyone involved, their team will decide on a date for them to move in. We don’t know the specific time frame, but our social worker has told us we can expect the transition to take at least 6 weeks. I would really like to have the kids settled as we move into the Holiday season so that we can be more relaxed going into that special time – that will be my goal.

We would love your support and prayers as we walk through this time friends. We are 100% confident in what we are doing, but also realize how HUGE the changes are going to be for our family.

We will let you know more details once we have them. For now – the adventure is just beginning!

The Great Unknown

May 25th, 2011

Tracy

Have you ever felt like you are standing on the edge of a cliff? It has been settled in your heart that you are going to jump, in fact your toes are hanging over the side but you haven’t taken that final leap? That would be us right about now.

When we decided to officially start this adoption journey several months back, I had a strong sense in my heart that we needed to get this ball rolling, and that specifically we needed to be DONE with the home study and paperwork process by Summer. We met that goal and as of this morning we handed in the final piece of paper needed to officially finalize our paperwork. Our packet was sent to the corporate office today – we are “unofficially official” at this point.

Since we are done, we’ve been emailed several adoption profiles of kids who were legally free and ready to adopt to see if our interest was peaked in any of them. I’ve read every one, and each time I had a sense of discouragement or an unsettled feeling – kind of a “how on earth do you know if this child is the one” kind of thing…..until Monday.

I was getting ready to leave and teach a class and an email from our Social Worker popped into my inbox. It was a referral for a “pre-adoptive” placement for a sibling group of two – a little boy (6) and a little girl (8). Almost instantly my heart jumped and I had a sense of urgency that I needed to pay attention to these two kids. I talked to Brian by phone briefly before I left and he sent an email to our Social Worker quickly that we would like to be considered for these two kids.

Let me explain the process a little bit for those who might be confused: We can choose to consider any child who is available, but the choice of whether we will be considered for that child as a family is totally in the hands of their social worker or team. So, in a nutshell, just because we are interested in a child does not mean that it will move forward. Basically, we can submit our home study (or PPA as it’s called) and ask them to consider us, but that is about as much as we can do.

So, the bottom line is that we have asked to be considered as a placement for these kids and their “team” will be meeting on or around June 6th to look at options. There may be more than one family who is interested and they will make a decision at that time about who they would like to consider. I’ve spoken to our Social Worker and she indicated that it was unlikely that our PPA would be officially approved and we would have our license back by then, but she had already spoken to the placing team and they would consider a “rough draft” or an unofficial copy of our paperwork. Interestingly, she conveyed to me that she felt like these two kids would be a “perfect fit” for our family as soon as she saw their profile.

And here is the kicker friends…..it hasn’t even been a week since we turned everything in. Remember this post back in April where the only messages I was hearing from our social worker and others were negative? Stuff like “it might take months or years, and honestly you might never be considered for a child”? Yeah…..God is bigger than that.

So that is where we are at right now. It will be a few weeks before we hear anything, and who knows what will happen from here, but my heart is encouraged. God is leading and he is in this ever step of the way with us. We will keep you updated on the details as we learn more!

Progress…

May 17th, 2011

Tracy

It’s been a little over a month since our last update and just like the three that came before, it was BUSY. We are excited to have that crazy season of constant activity behind us and move forward into the Summer months with actual free time on our hands! Here’s what we have been up to through April and the first part of May.

The end of our MAPP classes for our adoption home study and foster care license did not spell the end of our paperwork and appointment journey. We all had physical and TB test appointments to complete. A few more documents to gather and our Home Visit with the social worker as well as Fire inspection also took place.
The kids took a trip to Indiana over their spring break to visit with their grandparents – they had a great time! We stayed behind and worked (and had a far less great time)
Easter weekend we had about 20 over for dinner and celebrated Abbie’s birthday as well
Brian took a 5 day business trip out of town where he put in a TON of hours. I think he counted up that he worked about 75 hours that week.
While Brian was out of town I took the kids camping with a bunch of folks from our Home Group. We all had a fantastic time and I think Noah caught the camping bug. He loved it!
I finished our family photo profile – it is a picture overview of who we are and what makes us unique. It was fun to do and I love how it turned out!
Our final visit with our social worker is scheduled for Thursday of this week. At this visit we will go over our completed home study documents and our foster care licensing paperwork. Once that is completed they send it off to be approved and then we are DONE. We do still have to get our CPR cards in June but other than that we are completely done.

It’s hard to believe that it’s only been 4 months really since we started this journey – it feels like forever. The finish line is almost in sight, at least the paperwork side of the finish line. In some ways, this is just the beginning. We’ve already looked at a few adoption profiles that our social worker sent which was surprisingly unsettling for me. I was not expecting to feel the emotions that I experienced when I read them. It felt strange and clinical – almost like I was “shopping” for a child. I realize that it’s important to know a child’s history and find a child who is a right fit for your family, but I have to rely on God for this one and believe that he will shine a spotlight on the child he has chosen for us. I don’t want the weight of choosing on our shoulders alone.

So now you are caught up – it’s been a whirlwind and I’m looking forward to having some time to post more frequently now that it’s a bit quieter.