I wanted to start this blog with the first letter I ever wrote to the girls, hoping that one day they would read it sequentially. The truth is that I have been so busy lately getting ready for the second home visit in our home study and with their older brother's birthday that I haven't had time to pull it out. As I write this, I remember that I may have emailed it to their social worker 6 weeks ago (or more), so I may be able to copy and paste it. Either way, I can begin here by saying that we have been praying for and hoping to adopt two little girls for about eight weeks now. The first time we learned of them, I tried to not think about them, as we were only about halfway through our adoption GPS classes, and I didn't want to get my hopes up. The next time we heard about them was on our last night of class, and their social worker wanted to get them in a home that would become their forever home by Christmas. Unfortunately, we live in a different county, and our social worker didn't see it exactly that way. Without overcomplicating things, our older biological children (all from previous marriages) had chosen to live with their same gender parent, and though we didn't really want that to happen, we had agreed to it. This made our worker very suspicious about the type of parents we were--if our biological children had chosen to live somewhere else, why would she place "someone else's children" with us. That was devastating news. I might not have been so quick to agree to let my other children live elsewhere if I had realized it would hurt my chances (or at least quadruple the time for placement) of getting my future children. Not to mention, our social worker is insisting that due to the children living with their other parents, she now has to talk to the two people who care the least about us in the world before deciding if we can be parents again. That--that these two people who did not want to remain married to us and to whom we had Biblical basis for our divorces now have control over whether and when we get our other children--is the worst part to me. They would not have such control if we were able to and chose to have a biological child together, and I have wanted to one-day adopt since I was a child. So many people have our and these children's futures in their hands.
Like our first home visit, our second home visit went well. We passed the inspection and did well in the interviews. Our youngest child, our son who now lives at home again, spoke candidly to the social worker, telling him that he wanted siblings here, that we were good--if not a little strict (we make him do his homework and before any games or TV) parents, and that he wanted to live with his father again because he got to do more and has siblings there. An honest almost-13-year-old during his interview, the social worker still told us that due to her caseload and her "need" to get in touch with our former spouses, it would be another six weeks before she finished our home study. She wanted us to call her in four weeks to schedule the next home visit (they usually only require 2), and she warned us that those girls wouldn't still be available then.
But, see...we feel as if we have already adopted those girls and two other children in our hearts. I feel as if I am "expecting" them and that this truly is a labor of love. As a labor doula and woman who has been pregnant five times (with three baby angels), I know what labor is like. The "pregnancy" and "labor" for an adopted child can be a very, very long process, often longer than the pregnancy of any human known and even longer than that of an elephant (that is close to two years, FYI). It is an extremely emotional process, even when you have all the Faith in the world that you are meant to have this child (or children).
The girls we hope to give the middle names "Hope" and "Faith" and our last name to soon (they will keep their first names, though one will be spelled one-letter differently), are a biological sibling pair and are currently two and three years old. We don't know when their birthdays are--I wish I did so I could give them presents, as we did at Christmas. We have never seen them or seen a photograph of them. We do not know their background or if they have any special needs. We just love them unconditionally, as we would a biological child we have never met. We pray for them daily and have our friends pray for them, and we have asked everyone to just pray that they will be in the best home for them as soon as possible. Of course, we think that is our home, and it will be bittersweet if it isn't, but we really want what is best for them.
For now, we have an empty nursery, with two toddler beds, dolls and toys, and clothes to last them a couple of years at least. We have the outfits we plan for them to wear on our first trip together to Disney World this June. We are hoping that when we go, they will already be officially ours, and maybe we can be in the process of getting their then 11-year-old brother and 17-year-old sister . . . Maybe.
No comments:
Post a Comment