Moving forward

During our time in Seattle and once we returned home we discussed the many options on how or where to adopt from. International/Domestic, white/ethnic, boy/girl, baby/child, private agency/state system. The choices were daunting as we slowly had to figure out what God's will for us in this would be. I continued to keep the wise words of a teacher/pastor at my church in mind, "you know it's from God if you knock and the door opens, if you have to bang the door down, it's probably not from God".

First we decided we definitely wanted to go domestic. I struggled with this initially only because of my dream with the baby Asian girl. However, after more prayer and thought, I came to peace with the notion that there are so many children right here in our very own backyard, so to speak, that need homes - why complicate the issue by going half way around the world. After we decided where we wanted to adopt from, the next step was how. I began researching on the web and requested a packet from a local Christian agency. I was blown away when I opened the information to find it would cost upwards of $20,000 to adopt a baby locally. We didn't have $20,000 just laying around and we weren't about to go into debt to add on to our family. We then found out about a local adoption fair and decided to shop around for a less expensive option. We realized that adopting a baby through private adoption was just too expensive and I also felt that it was a little selfish of me to put myself in the large pool of mom's wanting a "healthy baby" who couldn't naturally concieve. I could and I did already. I've already had the experience of carrying and birthing a baby from the start and there are so many other women out there who won't ever get that experience, they should get first dibs so to speak at the "healthy babies".

At the adoption fair we came across another Christian agency that specialized in placing children from the state system. We figured this would be a good way to go. The agency would be there to help us and guide us along the way and it seemed to fit our budget a little bit better. Only a couple of thousand instead of ten's of thousands. We inquired for a packet and slowly began filling out our paperwork. This is the time when we started announcing the news to all of you (our friends and family) that we had made the decision to adopt. By now it was the holiday season and joy was in the air. But that also meant lots of holiday activities and such to keep us busy and we decided that we would wait until the first of the year to submit our packet once the holiday hustle and bustle was over. Then things would kick into gear.

January came and just before we were getting ready to submit our paperwork, a co-worker of mine who is a foster parent in our state ask me why we weren't going through our state to adopt. I simply tried to explain that I really didn't have an answer other than we felt the state wasn't really the best way to go from what we understood. She straight up told me I was wrong and that I should look into it. Then, in the same week a friend from church told me of someone she was friends with who had foster/adopted from the state and recommended I talked to her. I then got in contact with her and discussed her experience. My co-worker suggested I also talk to the placement coordinator for our area about foster/adoption. I called and talked to her as well. By the end of the week, all arrows were pointing in the direction for foster/adoption and I knew I had to approach Brian on the subject.

After discussing it in detail, we come to the conclusiong that God was directing us in this direction and it truly looked like the best option for us. There was one potential problem though...and it was a biggie.