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.