Adoption: Our Next Steps

Many of you know that my husband and I wanted to adopt again.  Even though we adopted two teenagers a year ago we wanted to do this again.  I believe that our children can be great role models for one another.  Our last adoption was a success and we pray the Lord has his hand in the next one too.  In order to continue on the adoption track our homestudy needed to be updated.  This is what it entails.

Our adoption worker had to interview each of my kids that lived in the house alone, interview my husband and I together and then an interview alone (making sure we agree on what we want). Then she had to come out to the house and went through a huge check list making sure there are no cribs in closets, making sure we had smoke detectors, the correct fire extinguisher on hand, first aid kit stocked, guns locked up, and so on. 

After the check list was done then she still had to talk with the children who were out of the house.  We had to turn in reference letters and she had to hear back from them.  This seems like a lot however since she already had a homestudy in place she was just adding to our all ready existing one.

As far as I knew as of yesterday she was almost done with ours.  I knew it was going to be any day that we would have access to an excusive website that had all the children in Oregon that was up for adoption.  Most of them have some sort of legal risk attached to them.  "Legal risk" means that there is a chance there could be a family member out there they have not found at this point that would have preference over us or their parent rights have not been terminated or evoked but it looks like that is the track they are on.

We have been talking to our kids about this process.  Preparing them for what could happen.  I tell them that God has a plan for us.  If he chooses to place children in our home for a season and decided they go back to their parent or reletive -- then that is his plan.  I told them that they might need to remind me of my own words because if that did happen I would be the biggest cry baby of all.  We have to remember while kids are with us we have a job. That job is to introduce them to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  We may have a season of time with them or hopefully when they come they will stay with us forever.  But remember -- We don't know what tomorrow will be hold but we know who holds tomorrow.

This time around we knew it would take a little longer (probably a lot longer) because our last adoption was very abnormal in the sense where things just clicked along and fell into place as if God was putting the puzzle together in front of us.  It was breath taking, scary but yet an excitement that is indescribable.  Our adoption worker has been doing this line of work for about 24 years.  She has NEVER seen an adoption go this fast EVER! She has said this more than once to me.  All I can say is that we prayed our way through this!  I also know why it went fast and who made it go fast.  The Lord is AWSESOME and brilliant in his work.

Going into this for the second time we were going to be "picky" this time.  Not just adopt to adopt.  We wanted anywhere from 2 to 3 girls.  Ages ranging from 8 to 12 would be good.  I desired 3 the whole time.  I have never waivered in that area.  We did want a sibling group.  The hard part was to find them.  Were they out there?  The Lord would lead our steps.

After searching on adoptuskids.org there were no sibling groups of 3 girls in the age group that we wanted.  That website spans over the whole USA -- this kind of gave me the preparation of "this might take awhile" -- But it is all in Gods timing.  I needed to remember the "Gods timing part" because you will never believe the email I got today.

The email asked me "would I be interested in a 13yr, 5yr and 4 yr girl?"  I about fell out of my chair!! I thought it was going to take much longer for all this to happen? 

To be continued.................