It has been quite amazing how things have so quickly turned from ‘planning for our adoption’ to ‘we are adopting’. I’m so thankful for all the work and preparations we made ahead of time because already I am finding myself unable to sleep with all that is swirling in my head.
To recap where we are at, we have signed with an agency and been accepted into their Eastern European Adoption Program. I have since learned that we need to be very careful about what details we share on public social media, and even mentioning the country is something we need to steer clear of. We have done all our initial paperwork, applied to an agency to have our home study started and have our first interview next week, and have paid for and started our training. There are ten hours of training that need to be completed for both our adoption and home study agency. We’re about 25% through it.
Our agency works in checklists to help keep us organized and on track. (see, with my love of checklist, clearly they were meant to be!) We’ve completed Steps 1 and 2 of our first check list, with the 3rd Step being partially complete (waiting on our home study to start and our training to be completed).
I will admit, that when we started, the load of forms and attachments felt a bit daunting already. You really do just have to sit down, and go one by one, reading through, getting organized, and working on completion. We’ve both since calmed down a bit I think!
We are working purposefully and steady because we also received the forms yesterday needed to request permission from the Eastern European government to adopt a specific little guy!!!
Like I said, things have quickly changed! But all I can say is…God. God did this. When we chose to switch our country of adoption EVERY SINGLE THING fell into place. And the very moment I opened the ‘waiting children’ link and laid eyes on this boy, I started to cry. I cannot explain the emotion that overtook me, and I knew we were meant to try and bring him home.
I do want to take just a moment and explain that while we are sure that we want this boy in our family, we are also VERY sure God has a plan, and if this doesn’t work out, we will be heartbroken, and then we will keep going. Every one of those children in that file deserve a family and several caught our attention, but for whatever reason, we feel God is asking us to move for this one specific boy right now.
So as you can imagine, knowing that I’m all emotion and D is all logic, I was ready to move 1.5 seconds after laying eyes on him, and D needed a few days to consider his disabilities, the changes in our home that would need to be made, and how he saw this boy fitting into our family. He said he’d let me know for sure Sunday (I already knew what his answer would be though, because he’s outward logic, but his internal emotions play pretty hard too) and by Saturday he had already said, “Let’s go get him!”
I wish I could show you his photo and tell you all about him. Please forgive us for not being able to share these things. Perhaps as we learn more we will be able to share a little bit more but I can’t be sure. In the meantime, we certainly do not want to do anything to jeopardize our chances of bringing him home. What I can tell you is that he is so incredibly beautiful. His needs are significant but there is so much potential in him that we cannot wait to start fostering. I can tell you that we are so excited, so full of love already for this boy, and also scared. There is much we will need to learn to care for him. But we also know that he is 100% worth it.
So for now we’re asking you to pray.
Specifically pray that we can get going quickly with our home study so we can complete our application to adopt him.
Pray that the government will see our hearts in our application and grant us permission to adopt him.
Pray that our upcoming fundraiser goes well because now more than ever, we need to make sure we have the funds available when needed. (I’ll do a financial post soon.)
And pray for this little guy and his health until he can be brought into a family (hopefully ours!).
We love you all!
The Other Side of Fear 