Busy, Busy, Busy

I don't know about you, but we are so crazy busy this month!! We have our usual Christmas gatherings and errands, but we have also had so much adoption stuff going on for our home study! As you know, we had our first visit with our social worker last week on Monday. Then on Saturday we completed our required training at the agency. It was called "Infant Training". Jayson and I laughed because we thought it was going to all be about how to take care of an infant. After our two infants, we could care for any child!! We also have to have our next and final chunk of paper work done by January 2nd... We have 3 weeks!! When you add in Christmas and New Years, that doesn't leave much time!!

The training was so much different than we expected it to be. We covered all of the laws for adopting in Idaho for all parties involved (birth mom, birth dad, adoptive parents, agency, etc.). We covered transracial adoption, medical openness, what to expect when adopting a child that has been exposed to different substances during pregnancy, and openness in adoption. In a lot of ways this training made us feel more at peace about a lot of things! Mostly being open in our adoption. There are varying degrees of openness and these are established between each birth mother and/or father and the adoptive parents. We went into this knowing that openness was best and being willing to do it, but not really having a peace about it. When we left, we both felt so much better about it and are much more prepared for an open adoption.

One of the things that we became more nervous about was the transracial adoption. For me personally, I don't want to willingly adopt a child that I knowingly cannot meet the needs of. I know that this is sort of a hot topic, and I am not wanting to offend or push anyone's buttons. Please don't feel that I am intending to be that way. We are still open to adopting a child of any race and would love that child no differently than we love Ava and Ryan Mostly I am just asking that if you have any experience with this, or know of any good resources that would help us, please feel free to share that with us!! We have already purchased a book from Amazon called "Inside Transracial Adoption". I am anxious to get it and start reading it. If you know of any others, please, please, please let us know!! We want to be completely educated on all things adoption :).

We are also looking for books or movies that are for children to help them prepare for adopting their sibling. If you know of any that would address that, please let us know!

Thank you for your continued prayer and support! God is moving!

-Andrea

Faith

"Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” ¹⁹ Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. ²⁰ Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, ²¹ being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. ²² This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” ²³ The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, ²⁴ but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. ²⁵ He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification."

-Romans 4:18-25

Yesterday we had the opportunity to listen to Pastor Grantly Martelly during our Sunday service. He spoke of how faith is not living your life by your budget, or by what you understand. Faith is living life depending on the promises of God. His life was impacted by being able to attend NNU and graduate with no debt. He was a poor boy from the Bahamas who had no money saved up for college. But he believed God's promise to him, and lived His promise. As I sat there and listened to him speak about Abraham who, against all hope but in hope, believed God's promise on his life. Even when everyone around him thought he was crazy! He was an old man, by all rights he should not have had the resources to have a child. His wife was an old woman, well past the years that most women bear children. And we all know how strong her faith was.

I feel like Jayson and I are living our own mini version of this story. We both feel that our journey into adoption was not one of our own choosing. We feel God calling us to do this. I think some people think we are crazy, but we have to do what God is asking us to do. Jayson's faith in all of this is astounding to me. Usually he is the one who is worried about money and how are we going to pay for everything. Not me. I am the one that is usually laid back and unconcerned about where the money will come from, but not this time. I guess this is just  another similarity to Abraham and Sarah :).  And while God has not promised us that we will have to parent a nation (can I get an amen to that?!), He has promised us that He will be with us and provide for us as we walk this path. We just have to believe in His promises and live accordingly. 

Today we had our first meeting with our social worker from the adoption agency. It felt a lot like buying a car. We signed, and signed, and signed, and signed. We got our next and final set of paperwork to work on that needs to be submitted by January 2nd. Once our Home Study is complete, we are going to try networking on our own and see what happens. We both still feel like God is asking us continue financially planning for an adoption through the agency. I don't know if this is just because God is asking us to be willing, or if the child that we will adopt is going to come to us through the agency. Regardless of His reasoning, that is what we are planning for. 

My go to response whenever I start something new or unknown is to read about it. So I have been scouring the internet for adoption blogs and staying up way too late reading them. I have read several really good ones. One of the themes that I have found in my reading is that nothing really goes according to plan. One of them was just so sure that God had a sweet little girl in mind for them. Turns out, it was two sweet boys! Another was just waiting for a travel date to go and pick up their little girl when they found out she was no longer available to them. Instead God directed them to a little girl who had some serious medical issues who would have died had they not been ready to go get her. I don't know what God has planned in detail for us. But I have faith that He will be with us every step of the way. 

-Andrea