Waiting

Waiting......it's something I'll never be great at...never gets easier.  I wish we could put a nine-month-stamp on this "pregnancy" and know that in less than a year, we'll have another baby.  But I can't.  I'm at the mercy of others, the mercy of schedules.....the mercy of God.  And that is the best thing about waiting, the part about God drawing me closer to Him as I seek patience.  He is pointing out to me daily the blessings I have in two little people that are already in my life.  They are at such a wonderful age, we get to use our imaginations to explore, we laugh together, they say amazing things that are often also stinking hilarious, they are brilliant geniuses, and they give the best hugs.  And they talk about wanting a new baby too, they want to know what babies are like, how they "talk".  So I talk to them a lot about when they were babies, what they were like, how little their clothes were, and it brings back so many joyful memories that their little faces light up when i tell them stories about their time in the hood....babyhood, that is.

We have begun the process in the foster-to-adopt program with our local Health and Welfare.  While we are still very much open to doing a private adoption, we know that at least with this program, we can move forward and hopefully grow our family.  Finding a "situation" on our own has led to some dead ends so far.  Since we will be foster parents, we could very well take in a child that we will have to give back, and I have thought long and hard about how I will deal with that.  The answer is, I  don't really know until it happens.  And while that is scary, I am also very certain that God will protect us from letting frustration and even despair take over, letting hope win out.

We have submitted the paperwork, and I have done fingerprints, Kevin will do his soon.  I wasn't able to let the kids see me get fingerprinted, it was in another closed room, so they waited outside with Grammy.  I tried to explain that this process is kind of like our ultrasound, but got no sympathy from the criminology worker, alas.  She simply, seriously said "it isn't a game, this is real FBI stuff".  To which I almost replied "Really?  You think I see this as a game?" but instead just chuckled nervously.  They wouldn't let Grammy (my mother-in-law) come in because they felt I might not answer their questions truthfully.  If only they knew how much she already knows about me!

Our hope is to foster a child that we can then adopt, and the process is case-by-case, meaning we won't really know if we can adopt them right away.  First, we have to attend a series of classes about fostering and adoption, and we can not begin those until later summer or fall, so it will be a while yet before we really move forward.

As always, we are grateful for prayers, and even for leads, even if they go nowhere for us, it leads us to pray for that baby, and for that I am thankful.

Adopted

Happy for them, but happier for us

We have always, always been open about sharing our adoptions stories.  Partly due to us wanting our kids to know how proud we are of them and the joy they bring our family.  We want them to know they were divinely chosen by God to miraculously make it to our family, and we're proud of their stories.  Additionally, we are also fairly open about what led us to adoption to begin with, that being our infertility.  I share our story openly in hopes that others may know there is hope past that pain, and further that adoption is chocked full of hope and blessings.

All this being said, it never fails that someone, usually a casual acquaintance or even a stranger, inquires "are these yours" as our daughter clearly looks nothing like us.  We then get a story about how her cousin's best friend's aunt's niece did 7 failed IVFs, then filled out paperwork to adopt, only to wind up surprisingly pregnant.  Then they look at me for a moment, to see if I got the point that really we just need to relax, and it will happen for us, too.  But here's where they are missing the point.  I am so proud of our family, how it has grown, the stories we have.  I feel so lucky every time I nuzzle a kiss in their neck amidst their giggles.  We have been married for nearly 14 years, and I am under no illusion that we will ever conceive.  And if we did, miraculously?  I'd be elated.  But if we are sent our miracle by another means?  I'd be ecstatic, because just as much as we are an answer to someone's prayer, they are an answer to ours.  And that's not an answer I can ever get across in a simple response to someone's story of their friend's dog's cousin's owner who just needed to relax.