As most of our friends and family know, in March, Clay and I decided to begin the adoption process. We both feel that this is how God has intended for us to begin our little family. We are both so excited about this process. We decided to go through Christian Homes and Families of Abilene and in April we attended Adoption Orientation. We then began the grueling task of filling out paperwork, scheduling classes, gathering references, and filling out even more paperwork. Thanks to lists, lists, and even more lists, we were able to have everything ready and sent in our application in May. In July we had joint and separate interviews with our agency. The last step in the process was the home visit, which we had August 19th and it went wonderful!!
We should be getting our acceptance letter by our agency within the week. So we are officially in the "waiting phase". We are so excited to be moving through this process. But we feel the hard part is probably yet to come. Clay can tell you that I've never been a particularly patient person! But patience is definitely a must in a journey like this one. Another hard part of this whole thing is trying to explain the process to people. I've had so many sweet and eager people ask me questions like "So when are you getting your baby?" "Are you having a girl or boy?" "When do you go pick a baby out?" LOL!!! If only it were that easy!
The way it works with our agency is birth mothers get a notebook with letters from families who are interested in adopting. The birth mothers go through the book and pick a few that interest them based on their letters. They then get photo albums to look through that the families have put together to give them a closer look into their family. The birth mothers then choose a family to parent their child. The family will then get a call from the agency. The agency will give the family the birth mother's medical history and background. If the family is interested, they will have a match meeting with the birth mother to see if there is a connection and a match can be made. If so, when the baby is born, the birth mother will then give her baby to the family to parent.
That's as good of an idea that I can give. The hard part to explain is that every situation is so different that our experience might not be like that at all. Sometimes the babies are born, then the family gets the call. Or families are matched but birth mother's decide to parent the baby themselves. There are so many different scenarios that there is not a "normal process". Which is why it is hard to explain to people. So my new answer when people ask me about the process is this..."We are now in the waiting stage. It could take 2 week, 2 months, or 2 years to get our baby. We don't know if we are having a boy or a girl. Whatever God blesses us with is what we were meant to have. Waiting is hard, but we know that God sees the bigger picture and his timing is perfect."
This has been a roller coaster of a journey, but a wonderful one and the end result will be so sweet. Please continue to pray for us along this journey. But more importantly, please pray for our selfless and strong birth mother and the sweet baby she is carrying. While I will be so ecstatic the day we are given our baby, I will never be able to imagine the pain and agony she will be going through when she chooses not to raise her baby and gives us the honor of raising her baby for her.
This first post sure ended up longer than I had imagined. But I will leave you with a few pictures...
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| The picture we chose to use along with our letter to birth mothers |
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A few pages from our adoption photo album  |
