Update

            Well, kudos to the people who can keep up blogs everyday (how are they able to do it?)!! It’s been a while since I’ve had time to sit down and write more about our journey to share with you. A LOT has happened since we shared our exciting announcement about our adoption…

1. We met with our homestudy agency coordinator.

            Shortly after our last update, we drove to Findlay, Ohio to meet with her for our orientation. She had a lot of great information for us, but honestly, she left me scared that we’re going to bring home an ill-adjusted, terrible monster. I know that our child will have at least some level of problems associated with receiving less than optimal care for the years before we bring them home, but I have to trust (and I pray) that the Lord is protecting his or her heart from long term damage. I have to trust (and pray) that with a loving and nurturing home with Jesus at the center, we can help to heal any amount of hurt they have experienced. And I have to trust that even if none of this turns our how we hope or expect, the Lord is calling us to this way of building our family and He will be with us through whatever we experience.

2. We’ve continued the paperchase.

            It really is crazy the amount of paperwork that we have to run down for every step of the process. The homestudy requires certain amounts of paperwork and the dossier (our international paperwork) requires other things. Fortunately some of the items are used in both, but for our international paperwork, everything has to be perfect and precise, notarized, certified, apostilled, etc, etc, etc. I’m great at checking off lists, but we seem to be slowly moving through the list – not moving at the pace I would certainly like. I’m learning a lot of patience through this process, and we are both learning the art of having to ask for help. Neither Kyle nor I really like to ask people for help – we are self-sufficient and don’t want to be a burden on anyone – but there are just some things in this process that we can’t do on our own.

            One of our biggest struggles was finding a psychologist who was willing and able to do our psych evaluation and personality analysis. We had found one, but he didn’t seem super-stoked to go through the process and write the VERY detailed report that was required. We had people praying that a psychologist would surface who would be able to do this for us because it is one of the most important components for our dossier. Praise God – our physician knew of someone in our area who was willing to work with us! He even sent us our paperwork packet with the personality test beforehand so that we could use our face-to-face time more efficiently. When we met with him, both Kyle and I were really nervous – who wants to sit there and talk to someone that you know is analyzing you??? Honestly, though, the meeting was great. We’re not crazy (I know, that may be a surprise to some people!! J ) and he even gave us some suggestions for our relationship to be stronger through this process and in the longrun based on some of the themes he saw through our biographies and personality tests. It truly was a blessing in disguise.

3. We’ve set a date for our two home visits with our social worker!!

            This is one of the final steps for having our homestudy documents finished. We have both of the meetings the first week of October and our homestudy should be finalized shortly after that. That means that all we’ll need after that is the remainder of our dossier paperwork to be certified, apostilled, and our immigration paperwork filed (sounds much more cut and dry than it’ll actually be). After that, our dossier will get sent to Honduras for translation!

            Through this process my emotions have really been up and down. I am so excited to bring home our child from a country that I absolutely love, but I get disappointed and discouraged when I think about how long it will take for all of this to take place. I am thankful that we have to go through so much soul-searching, analyzing, reading books, and training because I think in the end it’ll make us much better equipped to parent (regardless of whether the child is biological or adopted), however, I get angry when I think about how many people have children by birth every day that are ill-equipped, crazy, abusive, or indifferent toward their children. Where is all of this education and probing for those people?? Kyle and I will be good parents, and yet every step of the way we have a nagging fear that someone will tell us that we’re not going to be good enough to bring a child home.

            Ultimately, we trust that the Lord knows what is happening through this process. Just as our relationship with Him (and our relationship with each other) goes through ups and downs, we are going to have ups and downs, doubts and fears, joys and celebrations. He has called us to this decision and will not abandon us.