June already...

I recently realized that I hadn't written an update here since the homestudy was finalized. While part of that is because life simply got busy, or that we needed to have experienced something to write about, another part is due to a renewed sense of discomfort about the direction we're heading in. These kinds of feelings ebb and flow for me depending on the day, and I have been told repeatedly that the process of adoption is simply uncomfortable and intrusive and anxiety-filled, so we'd been trying not to put too much stock in it. Unfortunately, it still makes it difficult to hop online and blog things out for everyone.

Since we're new to this whole process, it seems wise to hire an agency (and social worker) to help us through the legalities and understanding what steps need to be taken so that we aren't taken advantage of or make any innocent mis-steps that get us into trouble legally or financially; thus our having signed with Bethany. We're following the directions of our social worker. But we're also, of course, trying to be aware of the subtle nudgings of God for our direction - we specifically chose a Christian agency in hopes that those elements will work together. Told that we needed to get the word out, we made the flyers that I posted about before. After that first initial "campaign" (only about a week) of sharing those with everyone, I felt strangely as though I needed to forget about it... became extremely self-conscious, and still am. A few weeks later it occurred to me that a full-sheet flyer is very difficult to share physically with people, so I sat down and designed business cards at one of those free sites, with all our adoption info on it so I could carry them in my purse. I got as far as the "submit order" button and realized I was NOT supposed to be doing this.... the best I can describe it is that the uncomfortable feeling turned to a disgust feeling and an inexplicable desire to run away from my computer. God seems to be telling me not to be yelling from the rooftops quite yet, and we have no idea why.

In the meantime, we began our search for children. Children in the care of the state are usually listed in an online database that, in most cases, includes photos; the databases are called Photolistings. There are a couple of national level photolistings - adoptuskids.org and photolistings.adoption.com - that I check a few times a week. There are some regional listings and adoption exchanges that cover a small handful of states, like nwae.org that covers some states in the North-West. Each state's Department of Child Services (or family services, or whatever that state calls it) has a photolisting, and some states have a photolisting available per county instead of one for the whole state. Then there are private organizations such as the Heart Gallery, which travels around to do advertising of hard-to-place kids in a physical location like an art gallery would show art, and Wednesday's Child, which features hard-to-place kids on TV during the news in different cities. This amounts to potentially 70+ websites that we could spend time searching through; though some children are repeated (some kids on the IL site could also be on the Heart Gallery or a national photolisting, for example). The purpose of looking through photolistings is to find a child who fits your criteria; unfortunately, some states are not allowed to post much of any useful information online, or only show the kids that have been in the system the longest, while other states list every single child in the state's custody, even if they're not adoptable for some reason. So in most cases we click a button, if we see a child we want more information about, and we wait to see how their social worker responds. Sometimes the social worker may not even hear from us... some agencies and departments sub-contract to another company to handle and forward the initial inquiries.

Which brings us to part of our despondency. We have set our criteria as broadly as is realistic for our family so that, if God decides a particular child is best for us, there would be fewer human road blocks. Kind of silly, thinking that tightened boundaries would limit God... I certainly don't think I have the power to do that... and yet, it seemed right at the time. We've begun to review our criteria, and I'm struggling with guilt of 'closing doors' just to fit the kind of family that I want. As it stands, our criteria are set to cover realistically what we could handle and are trained to handle, even if we don't really want to handle it. We're trying to be realistic; we wouldn't even get any kind of choice if we were going about this a bit more traditionally. Lanse also points out that God favors the willing, so in tightening our boundaries are we childishly saying no to God? We're talking, praying, reading, seeking His will. We're seeking wise counsel... meeting with our priest on Thursday to see how he might help us interpret what we're feeling and hearing.

In the meantime, we are maintaining our present course until we hear definitively otherwise. A couple of weeks ago, I once again sat down to look through photolistings, and a sense of hopelessness and despair just washed over me; I felt that the only possible way to welcome a peaceful and fun-loving child into our home would be to seriously stress our abilities in other areas... the kind of child that we want is simply not present in the photolistings. There's a big sense that we're making due to fit a philosophy we held when we began years ago that, frankly, I'm not sure I'm as convinced of anymore. But that Sunday I had spent in meditation, praying for guidance, questioning over and over why God very clearly brought us to this moment and nothing was happening. We were stalled for no apparent reason. I sat in front of my computer with children's faces on the screen, none of them mine, feeling chained to it... I couldn't close the window or let go of this desperate need to just DO something...and suddenly the answer just dropped quietly into my head: "She's not ready yet." And suddenly I was calm again and could move on to other things.

We're meant to wait; whoever "she" is, God is doing a work in her. It could be our child (we've both night-dreamed about a girl), it could be a birth mother or a foster mother, it could be a social worker... He could even mean me, and I'm trying to carefully assess myself just in case. But we know that the entire process is one of waiting, and that message didn't tell us to stop inquiring on children or looking at photos. We were not told to stop following our social worker's direction. So we've continued to look, and at one point I even felt drawn to the computer, compelled to look... and inquired on a child who did not fit the stated criteria but it just felt right to inquire. An infant, she was listed and removed from listing in three hours and was no longer available when I spoke to her social worker. I'm not sure what the purpose of the insistant feeling was in this case, but perhaps we'll find out.

I'm keeping a database of all the children for whom we've submitted inquiries. It's important to keep track so that we don't inquire multiple times on different sites, so we know when we sent a release of information form for each child, the date we hear from their worker, the date Bert sends our homestudy, and the child's adoptability status. Today there's 32 line items in the database, with 13 sibling groups, for a total of 45 children. Of those 45, only about 5 of them are current in the last two weeks, and we've heard back on 16 of them, all not available or a poor match. The rest of them... no idea. And most of them were inquiries made in the first two weeks of May. So far, things are proceeding as we were promised... no news is simply no news.

Our social worker has also been having some difficulties which support God's plan for us to be waiting a bit. A friend of hers died out of town, when she got back from that trip the agency had installed a new email server system thing (she couldn't describe it to me very well) that made all the email bounce, and the week after that something happened at her house with electric or plumbing that meant she had to be home for someone to dig up her entire front yard. One thing after another is keeping her from working on our process.. or really that of all her clients. So we call and wait and wait and call and inquire and see what may happen next. After her email snafu, it's likely that some of the replies to our inquiries are sitting in her computer somewhere.

And that's what's happened in the last nearly-two months. This week has put an interesting spin on my thoughts, as I'm working every morning with the preschoolers (ages 3-5, our target adoption ages) at Kids' Kamp, our church's Vacation Bible School program. One of my favorite adopted kids from church (international adoption) is finally old enough to attend, and it's been a joy to have him. We'll be heading to New York for the July 4 weekend and week after, but I'll hopefully have it in me to post an update before we leave.

Please pray that we will be given peace and a firm confidence in what God wants us to do. I'm looking for an action direction, clear and precise. If He wants to initiate the Large Neon Arrow approach, that'd be fantastic. But whatever works, so long as Lanse and I are clear and of one mind.

We very much appreciate your prayers and support.