Well, it's December now, after Christmas (it was good!). In between now and the last post, our bathroom was redecorated and made non-moldy and safe for the inspection. Yay!
In other news, we just put our almost-last packet of stuff in the mail for Bethany. Ooooh. We finally hauled ourselves in to the police station to be fingerprinted like common... adopting parents. *hee* So those, and a bunch of other things are going in today. Yay!
Second Adoption Meeting
Well, it seems to have gone well. We arrived at 8:00, and didn't leave until after 12:00. Last meeting was a few hours of writing paperwork; this meeting was all interview questions about our families and past and who we are and things. Lanse found it to be really draining, but we were both surprised at how it really didn't get horribly deep. It also appears that we've combined sessions; during our first meeting she did all of the meeting 1 stuff, and half of the meeting 2 stuff. This time we did the rest of meeting 2 stuff and all of meeting 3. So we only have one more meeting, which will take place here at our house when all the rest of our paperwork and stuff is done. That can't finish up until I'm healthy, (for those of you out of the know, I have pneumonia again), because medical tests are part of it.
The next biggest thing to do (besides bloodwork and fingerprinting) is prepping the house for her inspection. Aside from a good deep clean, I'd like to strip the wallpaper in the bathroom and clean the walls. Anyway, I guess that's the news at this point. Thanks so much for your prayers! Please keep on praying. She's going to be emailing us websites with photolistings so we can get started on screening through kids! Pray that we'll have overflowing discernment and not fall in love with every needy face we see. :)
Adoption Social Worker Meeting One
This morning we got moving a little early and drove out to Glad Tidings Church on the other side of town to meet our new Social Worker from Bethany Christian Services. In the last couple of days we've each prepared a 2-3 page autobiography, and collected documents on our birth, marriage, and life insurance. Gathering all those together, we headed out to meet at 8:00 this morning.
We found the church, arriving about five minutes early. Everything was locked, no one was in sight, and the sign on the door said office hours started at 9:00. She had also told us to meet at -Good- Tidings Church, not -Glad- Tidings Church, but the street address was the correct one, and the phone book didn't have a Good Tidings Church. Oh, no! Were we in the wrong place? That was when we realized that Jacquie hadn't given us her phone number; so far we'd only communicated via email. So we called the New Jersey office, which is the only one we had a number for, and while they were contacting Jacquie, she pulled into the parking lot.
Apparently someone at the church had agreed to come open up early for her, but then was unable to make it. So we began in the back of Jacquie's SUV. First, she gave us a bunch of paperwork to read and sign, some to return to the Bethany office via mail, and some to hold for her until our next meeting. We gave her our autobiographies, and then she had us begin a "Self-Study". She told us that typically she would have each spouse in a separate room, so we were not allowed to talk or exchange looks or peek at each other's paper. *heh* SO much like a test at school! Our self-study was five pages of questions about ourselves, broken down into categories: Personality (my own strengths and weaknesses, personal achievements and disappointments, goals, etc.); Childhood (happy and unhappy memories, how I was as a child, my parent's relationship); Marriage (our relationship, his and my strong and weak points, common interests, how we settle differences, our relationship with our in-laws, personal priorities); and Children (how it will change our lives, what qualities we want to instill and how). While in the middle of our self-study, someone finally came and opened up the church, so we moved inside where we could write on a table and not our laps.
After we finished the self-study, we gave her our documentation, which she copied information from, we reviewed what we needed to do next, and we made some small talk. And that was that.
After our meeting, Lanse and I went out for brunch, where we very briefly commented on our morning and then tried to not talk about it and take an emotional break. We went to Staples after food to get filing stuff for all the paperwork and headed home.
I've gotten all the filing done, Lanse is in bed sleeping, and now that I've caught this up I'm going to join him. I'll probably post later with what my feelings were on all these events. Right now I'm still processing. :)
Well, America World can't help us. *weep* I'm really more upset about it than I look, mostly because there's way too much to do right now to deal with this. America World is a Christian adoption agency that offers programs only internationally; however, they were listed on the NYS site as a voluntary alternate agency for helping with homestudies. The lady at HQ said it would be unusual, but perhaps... and gave me the number of the local guy. He was very sweet, but very policy focused. *sigh* They just can't help us, cuz it's not What They Do. Knowing the world of adoption, I'm guessing there's probably some kind of domestic paperwork they haven't filed, since they don't do domestic adoptions.
Next up, I'm waiting for a call back from Bethany Christian Services. They also do not have anything official about domestic waiting children, but they do have a domestic infant/birthmother program, so they may be qualified to help us. We'll see. If they can't, I'm not sure what the next step is. Christian agencies around here apparently (generally) don't do domestic waiting children.
We've been journeying along the adoption path emotionally and mentally over the last five years or so, each at a different point along the path. I'm generally the 'jump in and go' type, whereas Lanse needs time to really soak in the ideas that I keep throwing at him.
Generally people think about adoption as firstly a trip to Russia or China or Guatemala, secondly as finding a birthmother to provide an infant for us, and finally, as 'oh, those poor crazy people, God bless them, adopting messed-up kids from the state!'
We started out on the birthmother route. For me, the emphasis was about me -becoming- a mother, as opposed to -being- a mother. If I couldn't birth a child myself, I wanted to get as close as I could to the experience: planning the nursery, seeing the ultrasounds, feeling the kicks, being in delivery, cutting the cord. These are all things that would fulfill my need in becoming a mother. I think there's enough evidence of almost a spirit-bond in utero that makes that response natural to anyone who realizes they can't have that choice. But seriously, count the 'I's and 'Me's in this paragraph. Plus, having a birthmother situation wherein the birthfather is known provides the best situation for replacing the type of birth I couldn't have. Everyone wants the ideal.
I started thinking of international adoption as I realized how self focused I was. Slowly I began to realize that adoption isn't about me, it's about family and children. My focus changed to the children and their needs, but somehow still focused on myself. We can go to Europe and adopt sad little abandoned orphan kids who need us, so long as they're our color, and aren't too old so that I can take care of them properly... and can't have any faults, since we really can't afford it. Somehow the sad little malnourished orphans in other countries need us more. Jesus taught us to love and care for widows and orphans.
Somehow, mulling and praying over that last sentance brought me to this weekend. I stumbled randomly onto the New York Child Services website, into the Available Children Photolisting, and I was struck suddenly by the realization that we have orphans -right here-. There are 633 children in New York State that are photolisted on the website. There are more who don't get photolisted. People are afraid of these children because many of them are older, and the assumption is that most of them have gone through trauma of some kind.
Yes, there are definitely children of that type, many with moderate to severe physical needs, and any orphaned child will struggle with abandonment issues. But there are children there with no problems except that they have a brother or sister, or that they aren't cute with chubby baby cheeks. What about the (theoretical) two kids whose parents died in a car accident or a fire? Sure there's trauma, but no more than my womb-born child could experience being in a car accident or having one of the family die.
Christ taught the early church to care for the widows and orphans, and a lot of emphasis is put on going out into the square with change, or bringing in wandering street children. Not many people realize that they went out into the square because they already cared for their own people. Early Christians had few possessions, lived either together or in close proximity, provided for and shared with one another. It was the true ideal concept of, perhaps, a commune... a true community. They took care of their own, and -then- moved to the world around them.
So suddenly we find ourselves here through prayer, with a new conviction to begin differently. I've had a number of years working in an educational setting and now feel that we have the skills and connections to provide for a child with more needs than when we began. We put in an email to Child Services here, hoping at the very least to begin the homestudy. We're talking about children age 7 or younger, possibly siblings (no more than two, due to bedroom space). We have time to make those decisions, but less time than we used to. It's terrifying and terribly exciting all at once.Please keep our journey in prayer.
