A New Year

A new year has begun and we wanted to update you all on what has been happening (and not happening!) with our adoption.

Since the fall we had been toying with the idea of going to Guyana this winter.  Unlike many countries who allow adoptions, Guyana was one of the only ones that allowed adoptive parents to go to the country to look for a child on their own.  We had been hesitant about this at first because it seemed a bit too much like shopping for a child.  Choosing a child out of many seemed impossible.  How do you choose a child?   How do you go into a situation like that and know which child is "the one"?  What if our selfish needs and wants influence our decision, causing us to overlook the child God has in mind for us, for the child that looks more like our ideal?  It seemed like an overwhelming and ridiculous concept, so, we decided to leave it in the hands of God and our agency instead. But as time went by we came to a point where we thought that maybe we should reconsider our initial decision and think about it again.  Maybe going to Guyana would help.  Maybe we could meet and establish needed contacts to get our names known and "out there", so that when a child is identified our names will be familiar.  Maybe there are orphanages that have not been reached that we could go to.  We realized this was not a decision we should take lightly so we began to pray that God would show us a clear path to take.  Should we go or stay?
Yesterday I got a call from our agency.  There has been a change of policy and no adoptive couple may go to the country to look anymore.  They said they will call us when a child has been identified for us, and until than we need to sit tight.  Although I have to admit it wasn't exactly what I was hoping to hear, Derek and I were pretty relieved.  We had no idea how we were going to "find" a child there, and we probably would have wasted our time and money wondering around in circles looking.  And we asked for direction, and this was a very clear answer to our question!  That was exactly what we were looking for!  During my phone chat, I also had the chance also to talk to our agent about some of our concerns and questions so it was a really good thing to have been able to talk to her.

And it's hard to believe, but it has been 2 years since we started this blog, our home study, and officially began the adoption process.  We didn't really think at the time that we would be waiting for 2 years although many people wait that long or longer for their adoptions to go through.  I guess I had this idea at first that ours would be the exceptionally fast adoption....the one that everyone hopes for, but hardly anyone has.  But,  here we are, and although it has not been the fast process we were hoping for, we have changed and grown a lot in the last 2 years.  We truly believe that God has been using this waiting time to change us into the people He wants us to be, preparing us for the child He has in mind for us.
We began this process optimistic, energetic, motivated, positive, and excited for the future.  We also began this process with ideals, preconceived notions, selfish ambitions and desires that were tainting our view of this adoption.  God has used the last 2 years to change us, change our hearts and prepare us for a different child than we went in looking for.  I don't even know what that looks like, but He has given us an open-ness that we did not have when we started.  This may mean we end up adopting a child with a life time disease, or special need.  We are not really sure where God is taking us with this but we know that His plan is better than ours.

Please pray for us, that we might have wisdom in this.  Please pray that we would have patience still in our waiting and that we will continue to trust in God's plan, not our own.
Please pray for our kids, we see them getting very discouraged in waiting.  One of my kids prayed out loud last week and ended his prayer with a huge sigh and said "I don't know if I should say this but could ya please hurry this baby up?  We are getting sick and tired of waiting for him!!"  They don't understand the process, and looking back we sometimes wonder if we should have waited longer to tell them about the adoption.  That being said, they have been praying faithfully for this baby for 2 years.  What an amazing feeling they will have when that prayer is finally answered!  Through this,  I have seen them slowly learn how to be more dependant on God and learn how to wait patiently for Him, so I am not entirely certain if we did the wrong thing by telling them early.