We are finished with our Home Study! Praise the Lord!
Now that Adoption Profile Books are completed and delivered to the adoption agency, I can take a breathe. That ol feeling of "gotta get it done" was always in my head. Whew!
So we turned in our books and......now what?
Oh wait....what are the books exactly, you ask? Well they are picture books with loooooooots of text. We downloaded the free software to make the book on our computer. We used My Publisher and loved it. The program was super easy to use and customize for this project. There are TONS of pictures of our family, friends, and us doing fabulously active fun stuff. Photos of Paul and I as babies (our parents are dressed really cool in those) :-). Photos of well, you name it, it's in there. If you are blood or marriage related, chances are good your happy face is in there somewhere. There is a birthmom letter in there telling her how much we adore her and appreciate her courage to go through this. And that we think of her often. There are bios on Paul and I, and we each wrote a page about one another. Ava drew a picture to put in there. It's a futuristic family photo. It has 4 smiley faces and a drawing of Paul's tools. I labeled them as she told me, so birthmom could identify the drawings. It has a bio about Ava. And there are pages that describe Paul's family and My family. And then, for our friend page a girlfriend of mine, Brianna, wrote a beautiful description of our family. They are hard back books and look pretty nice in my opinion. And they are mega important because it's all the birthmom will ever see or hear about us to make her decision to place her child in our family. So....yeah...I poured a lot of time and effort into it. The birthmoms dont sit down with counselors and chat about each family. Its just the book to pick from. It's only one book, just 5 copies of it, to get distributed to each of their offices.
So what's next.....
Well, periodically, we will get an email of a birthmom profile. (before she has seen our profile book) We get to see every detail they know about the birthmom and putitive father(alleged biological father). They are about 3 pages long. And have lots of details. Good, Bad, & Ugly. A lot of us probably envision Sally and Johnny who are giving up a baby for adoption because while he is the star quarterback and she is the star cheerleader and they have great grades and only had sex one time and ...woops....there's a baby on the way! But that is only about 10% of the scenarios. Most have drug usage, alcohol usage, sexual/physical abuse, mental disabilities, and whole array of things I won't go into detail about. The agency has done a great job preparing us for most of this. So we will look through the birthmom's profile and tell our social worker, Margo, if we are willing to let her see our profile. We already filled out a Desired Child Form which covers what we will and will not accept and what we are "willing to discuss". So based off of that, Margo matches us up with birthmom profiles to look at.
How often will we get those? No telling.
I turned our books in on Tuesday, July 5th and got 4 emails of birthmom profiles today, Wednesday July 6th. Is that normal? No clue.
So Paul and I sat down and read through the profiles. I bounced over the couch, sat next to Paul, smiling big and thought it would be fun. Now, I cannot/will not discuss what was in each. All of that is confidential. But I can say, that today.....I wept. I hurt for the girls and what they are going through and the deadly assaults the enemy has them under. There was a whirlwind of positive and negative emotions swirling. It was like I could feel their hurt. It was crushing. After reading the first 2 profiles, I remember that Margo had told us that it was not unheard of that adoptive parents ask for the profiles to be sent to the husband because the wife didn't want to look, because she couldn't handle it. I get that. I still wanna get them and read and know what the 411 is but man.....I was not expecting that. I guess that I kinda figured it would be an easy read. What I found was the reality of the crushing blows of the enemy. His reign of terror in the lives of the lost. Now the good news is that the girls are all receiving counseling and the love of Christ, WOOHOO!! And some are turning their lives around and some have received the Lord in their hearts and are "on the wagon".
It's tough to make a decision. If a girl is making incorrect prenatal care decisions that could affect the baby/child/future adult, that's scary. But I know and trust that the name of Jesus trumps everything. And that God The Great Physician can cure and fix and restore ANYthing. So then there's this huge battle in my heart about, "well, do I accept all birthmom's, trusting God to place the right child with us, or say, Nah honestly, I can't handle that and say no".
So tonight I went to Wednesday night church. It's rare I get to go but it's always awesome. I just desperately wanted to be in a place where lots of other people genuinely love God. And aren't afraid to show it loud and proud. I wanted it to be loud (and it was) so that I could praise Him so loud but no one could hear me. I just wanted to be around seekers of His face. It jazzes me up to see a large mass of folks genuinely worshipping God All Mighty. It's encouragement that "Hey, you're not alone. Lots of others genuinely love God and seek Him."
While I was there God gave me a visual. All of a sudden I could clearly see (what my mind poised as Jesus feet) feet wearing sandals walking down a dirt road. My eyes were closed and I felt my hands reaching up to touch the feet I was watching. It was so real, like one of those dreams where you can't decifer reality from dreamworld. I just wanted to touch His feet. I feel like He was showing me that He will lead us down this path, step by step. And no matter what emotional, financial, worrysome distractions pop up, I just need to follow the feet of the Master. He's leading! It was beautiful. Tears were flowing (yes, again).
Then during some songs, I went and got prayed for by some friends. A couple that knows Paul and I. He is a pastor at the church and she and I were in choir together. I told them that we had gotten the birthmom profiles and that I was struggling with whether to say "no" to any of them. Brooke prayed for me and it was so sweet. And then her husband, Hayes, said he felt like I didn't need to worry about the Friday timeline. (That's when we're suppose to give the thumbs up or down on theses profiles.)
As I went back and started worshipping some more. I started matching up all the revelations God has been giving me. See, I'm hosting a small group this summer. And every week I write a devotional and email it to the moms in the playgroup. I have only put about 20% of what God has shown me in there because there's just a lot. But the main theme that keeps occuring is that His presence is Peace.
So the visual of the footsteps leading me, the revelation of Presence is Peace, and the word from Hayes about not worrying about being pressured by the time frame all meshed together. And this is what I got out of it.....the visual is THE Precious Lord leading me not only in this adoption journey and life, but leading me to Presence of God and thus, Peace. So that the profiles I feel a peace about, I can go with, without second guessing our decision and without feeling like a horrible person b/c I'm not willing to take on some of those issues. The time frame is irrelevant because I already knew which ones I had peace about. Just like time is irrelevant to God.
Well, it's super late. I'm super tired. And I'm sure that by now, this is full of run-on sentences and not making any sense what so ever.
Just know that we are in it to win it! Things are moving along. And we could seriously use your prayers. Didn't know how much of an emotional roller coaster this was. But I know who's operating the ride. :-) Resting in the sweet strong arms of Abba, time for bed.
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