If you don't know any details since March, you can review the "Setbacks..." and "In Response" posts for background info.
One thing I do want to mention is that Daniel and I still love the agency we've worked with, as well as our social worker. This is most definitely not a post intended to complain about our process thus far. Yes, some things could and should have been handled differently but that doesn't mean we're not still confident in our choice of an agency.
As written before, our Home Study was FINALLY approved! Yay! As also written before, our agency put us on "hold" until the birth of our biological baby. After much consideration and prayer, Daniel and I decided to contact the agency to see if they would reconsider our "hold" status. We never heard back from them...
So I emailed them again about two weeks ago. The very next day I had a response from the director! She explained that there had been miscommunication in everyone thinking someone else had contacted us. Go figure. She explained in greater detail what the "hold" status means and when exactly we'll be allowed to start the process again....not at the birth of our biological child as we had been told before...but when our biological child turns ONE year old.
It just so happened that about 3 days later we were going to be in the area where our agency is located. We were able to schedule a last minute meeting with the director. It was GLORIOUS finally having the opportunity to talk with someone face-to-face! She apologized profusely for the way a few things had been handled in our case. She recognized and admitted that things had fallen under the radar when they never should have been. She was actually the one to assign writing our Home Study to an intern because she discovered that it had not been completed two months after it should have been.
So on to the results of the meeting...Nothing changed from what we had already been told, but we were able to understand more clearly the agency's views and the "why's" to the process of the "hold" status....I won't really get into the 'why's,' but I'll explain what our adoption process looks like for the next, well...year-and-a-half or so.
Because of different reasons, when a couple conceives during their adoption process, the agency requires them to wait before moving forward. The director explained that these rules had been bent in the past...all to the detriment of the children involved...for different reasons. The agency keeps our Home Study on file. When our biological child turns one year old, we can contact them in order to start the process up again. We will not get to "pick up right where we left off" as we had been told before. We will have to update our Home Study (the packet that basically holds everything important about us.) By law, when you adopt a child, everything in your Home Study needs to be less than 1 yr old. (We knew all this beforehand because this goes for any adoption if you've waited for a child for over a year...you have to update the Home Study...we just hoped it wouldn't apply to us since technically we haven't waited one day, much less one year!)
To update our Home Study, we will have to...
1. Get physicals again, including bloodwork
2. Get fingerprints done again (This one just really excites us since it will be the fourth time...)
3. Have our social worker visit our home
4. Make NEW profile books...sad that the one I slaved over will never be used...oh well
5. Pay a small fee to have everything updated (not to mention the fees that go along with the above 4...however, it will be significantly lower than what we've already paid so it's not like we're paying double)
SO....We are completely at peace with where we're at...We know God led us to our agency...He is sovereign and knew how everything was and is going to play out...We certainly don't!...but He does. He knew we were going to conceive right when our process was finishing up...He knew we were going to be put on "hold." He knew it all.
It's very strange to have your life heading 60 mph in one direction and then BAM!...60 mph in a different direction! I'm sure many of you can relate. Over the last few months there has definitely been a mix of emotions in our household! We're thrilled to be pregnant, but we've also grieved in a sense over the unexpected twist in our adoption process. I've found that it's hard for MANY people to believe that we started the adoption process for reasons other than infertility....because good grief, why else would people be crazy enough to adopt?! HA!...or so our world teaches. Getting into that topic is definitely not for this entry! But anyway, maybe this blog will help spread the message that we aren't adopting just to get a baby...we are adopting because God laid it so heavily on our hearts that we couldn't escape from it! We weren't trying to pursue adoption while also being pregnant because we're desperate for babies! We simply knew that God had led this entire process and we weren't about to quit because something came up that WE weren't expecting. This whole process has been about obedience and God sure knew that we were going to be expecting! This process has taught us a lot about being obedient no matter what. Just because something popped up in our lives that we weren't expecting, does not mean that we just get to back out of everything God has led us to do. Just because
As Baby Girl bounces around in my belly right now, I am so very grateful for every single moment of the last two years. Daniel and I are two different people from who we were two years ago. We had NO IDEA what God had in store when we simply decided to say "yes," to His direction. I encourage you to seek the Lord in His direction for your life...not YOUR direction for your life, with His blessing thrown in there...but throw away your direction...and seek His. Through this process, I feel like we've only scratched the surface of who God is and what He is capable of...have you allowed Him to direct your life, or are you just asking for His blessings on your plans? I still have so much to learn...I fail at being obedient every day...but it's so much harder to be obedient when you've never experienced what comes out of obedience. How can we trust God to do what He says He'll do when we never give Him the opportunity to act?
-Megan
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