What could be my LAST post about our adoption process

 

(Christmas pictures 2 years ago)

This is a hard blog post to write.  Full of emotions.  I’m praying you will hear my heart and be encouraged, even through our disappointment.

In the last few weeks my husband and I had to make a big decision.  We knew that the day would be coming when we had to decide whether or not to renew our license to adopt. We started this journey 4 years ago next month and we were so, so naïve. I think we thought that because we were, let’s face it…… an awwwwwwwwwwwesome family (lol), that our wait would be short. I also think that we thought that because we were Christians that God would somehow magically make the process happen quickly for us (why do we believers sometimes think we will get special treatment?  lol).  And we were also just really naïve to the fact of how stinkin’,  ridiculously hard this adoption thing is.

When we first began our journey , we were wanting to adopt a newborn from a private agency. After waiting about a year and a half we realized that very few birth moms even want to see the profiles of families who have 3 biological children. Statistically speaking, the majority of  birthmothers are young. And studies show that those young mothers want their children to be the only children in the family or in a family where there is already an adopted child.  I cannot argue with that logic. So since we had 3 kiddos, we were rarely considered. Our profile was shown 10-12 times, but usually the “feedback” was that the birthmoms wanted homes without children.  We could have switched agencies to several agencies that had more babies available more frequently, but frankly, we could not afford it.  We checked into agencies that were $35,000-$45,000 and just could not bring ourselves to mortgage our home or borrow from our 401ks. 

So, that’s when we decided that we would try to adopt a child out of foster care. We had been watching Ava get older and we just really did not want a huge gap between her and the next kiddo anyway.  We decided that with all of the kids in foster care and with all of the statistics on websites and with all of the need that we hear about…. that surely that process would go better for us. We were looking for a healthy girl of any race, under the age of 6.  We thought that would be easy to find.

Well, we’ve been waiting with the state of Missouri for almost two years. We’ve gone through more finger printing and home study sessions and Saturday trainings than what I care to blog about.   And we were happy to do it because we really did feel like this was exactly, exactly, EXACTLY what the Lord wanted us to do. And yet, our profile has only been considered twice in 2 years.  We didn’t know going in that rarely….. rarely is there just one child in foster care.  Usually it is a sibling SET.  FAMILY often takes just one kiddo in the system.  And most often, the children are NOT under 6. They are tweens and teens that I just want to wrap my arms around and tell them they are valuable, but we were adamant about the birth order in our home.  We WERE presented with the opportunity to adopt a sibling set that had some special needs.  But after much, much prayer, we just felt like it was more than our family could do. And we said no. And I wept but I knew it was right. 

So, now has come the time when we either have to renew our license or pull out. And “renewing our license” unfortunately means many, many, many more hours of continuing education before the end of November (I think we would need an additional 30 hours of training). It also means another round of home studies and another round of finger printing and another round of all the stinkin’ stuff that comes with “the system” (it took me 6 months to finish our paperwork the first time!).

And in the event that it would appear I am complaining about the system, I’d like to also mention that I did apply for a board position with the state of Missouri so that I could help improve the very system that I am frustrated with. It was a volunteer, unpaid position that would require me to travel to our state’s capital for meetings every quarter, but I would have been happy to do it.  There is something very wrong with a system that has the kind of turnover that ours does, with very overworked and underpaid social workers whose hands are TIED because of red tape. It’s tragic really.  But, I never heard a word back from the state. 

And so, since the journey has been so long and so discouraging,  it really didn’t even take a lot of decision-making by my husband and I. It wasn’t like we sat down and tried to wrestle thru the decision of whether or not to continue.  Rather, it was just verbalizing the finality of it that was already in our hearts.

As the almost 4 years have gone by, it’s begun to settle in both of our hearts that maybe this dream of adopting would not happen. We started to get rid of our baby stuff last year.  We started to prep our kids for this may not happening.  And so the actual decision almost seemed to make itself at this point.  But I want to be totally transparent here….. The wrestling in my heart has not been over the decision of whether or not to continue? The wrestling in my heart has been wondering if we were even on the right path in the first place? 

Now, I know what some of you are thinking. You’re thinking that if we would be foster parents first that we would have a much better chance of adopting and you are absolutely right.  And I can tell you as certain as I’m sitting here, that with all of our hearts, my husband and I have never felt led to foster. Let me tell you a story.

We had neighbors once who had 2 daughters who I loved like my own.  Their home had many problems that I was helpless to fix.  But our family gave our hearts to those girls.  Those girls spent many, many days with us. They would get off the bus and come to our home. They would have dinner with us. They would spend the night with us. They would go on family outings with us.  I loved those girls with everything in me for the 3 years that they lived by us.

And I remember the day that I sat on my front steps and watched them move away from our block. And I cried because I knew that my season of being able to love them-and in some way hopefully help protect and heal their little hearts- was over. I sat on my front steps and bawled like a baby that they were no longer going to be somewhere “safe”.  Who would call DFS?  Who would take them to church?  Who would protect them when their parent’s weren’t well enough to?   It was the very month they moved that we started our adoption process.  Loving and loosing those girls was what spurred me to want to follow the dream I had in my heart for YEARS.  But I knew that we were to be a permanent solution for some little girl. We did not want to be a temporary stop where the state may send them back to an unhealthy home and our 3 biological kids would have to deal with that heartbreak also. No, my heart is not knit for that and neither was my husband’s or our kid’s and we knew it.

In retrospect, I DO wonder if we should have considered international adoption? I look at one of my heroes, Jen Hatmaker and see her precious family.  And I have personally met Layla from The Lettered Cottage and see how close they are to getting their son. The temptation is to feel like we messed up.  The temptation is to see their journeys and compare.  The temptation is to feel LIKE WE HEARD GOD WRONG. And then the BIGGEST temptation is to feel like if we heard God wrong in this area, then do we even hear him at all?

I wish I could just reach thru the screen and hug every one of you who I know have made decisions in your life that you thought you were SUPPOSED to make and they just didn’t go the way you planned.  You thought you were obedient in that job change, and it failed.  You were faithful in that marriage, and he left anyway.  You raised your kids in church every week and they still wandered from their faith.  I know some of  you know what I’m talking about.  You feel like you do all the right things and you are faithful to what you feel like God’s asking you to do….. and you end up feeling frankly, a little railroaded.  I get it.  And the temptation is to be jaded. And doubt that you have ears to hear.  And not even want to try again the next time you feel like God is leading you. I want you know that is EXACTLY what the enemy hopes you and I will do.

I hope you can hear my heart here because I know that we have not traveled this journey in vain.  And YOU have not traveled your journey in vain either.  I know that God takes what the enemy has planned for evil and He uses it for good.  I know someone needs to hear that just because you are disappointed God did not work something out like you thought it would go, that He is STILL a GOOD God.  And you STILL have a purpose and call on your life.  And you DO hear from Him. And your journey, my dear friend, was NOT in vain. And neither was ours.

So, when people ask me why I think that adoption did not work out for us, I have no answer.  I’m not sure that we’ll ever know the answer to that on this side of Heaven. I’ve been tempted so many times to be offended because I feel like I sense judgment in their comments and questions. Even though they’re not saying it, I feel like they are insinuating that “we didn’t hear from God”.  Or equally as painful…. that we weren’t “ready to adopt”.   But I can tell you that I know with everything in me we have tried to be as obedient as we could throughout this journey.  And at the end of the day, I have no idea why we were never selected. But I do know, that if God was testing our obedience, we have passed that test. If God just wanted to see if we would say yes, we did. I don’t know that God is a “tester” in those ways.  But I do believe we did the best with what we thought He asked us to do.

I’ve tried to think of other things that we can do and frankly, right now I think we will just rest. Perhaps at some point we will sponsor a child in another country? Perhaps, at some point, we will go on a mission trip to an orphanage? Perhaps, at some point, we will find out that our journey, albeit that it ended up unsuccessful, perhaps it inspired someone else to successfully adopt.   And that my friends will make my heart so, so happy.  Because adoption is a good thing.  Don’t let our journey discourage you.  If you feel led at all to add a child to your family thru adoption, I urge you to try.

Because my heart is FOR children.  And FOR families.  And FOR adoption.

So while my heart is sad and my heart is disappointed, it’s also at peace. God has other things in store for my family and He knows best. Of that I am certain.

And as for the 3 precious biological children that the Lord has entrusted to us…. I just have to trust that God will make good of their disappointment too.  When I spoke to each of the kids separately about our decision and checked in on each of their hearts, 2 of the 3 of them responded in very deep, Christ-like manner by asking “well, can we at least get a dog?”  So, I’m thinking they will be ok. Ha!

But yet, Ava did draw another family picture tonight of “our family” which included me….. holding her baby sister, the one we don’t think now we will ever get. And that just rips at my very being.  And I did tuck all of our kids in to bed just a few weeks ago and still….. still feel like there was a 4th child I was forgetting to tuck in.  I wonder if that feeling will EVER leave me?  I have kept the 4th Christmas stocking that we bought for this baby girl, because well….I just can’t bring myself to part with it.

But for now friends, this journey is closed to us.  If God re-opens this adoption door at some point, our hearts would be open.  Until then, we commit to praise Him in the hallway.

Thank you for letting me share my heart with you.  This is like good therapy.  Baring my soul. Trying to make sense of it all.  For those of you who have walked this journey with us, thank you. I hope someone, somewhere is blessed by our story.  God is good, all the time.

In love,

Jennifer