Time is a funny thing

Picking up where I left off five months ago today. So much has happened in the last five months. It has not been easy and has really tested our faith and sanity. To make a long story short, we ended up having to put our adoption on hold. For reasons I will never understand, we conceived a child again in March. We were so thrilled but it was a very very short pregnancy. But long enough to halt the adoption and make us question every single thing we were doing in building a family. After months of agony and praying we are right back to where we were in March. Looking forward to adopting. I have tried to piece the puzzle together and here is what I have....the ONLY thing that makes sense is that God put us on this timeline to meet him or her at the time we were appointed to in this life. Five months ago was not our time to be active in this adoption and five months ago was not our time to carry a child. Our social worker never took us off the state list to adopt which is crazy to me. So when I contacted her a few weeks ago and told her I am ready to start back up she was thrilled. She said we are #1 on the state list to adopt. Five months ago we couldn't even present to birthmoms here locally. I was totally shocked. We have no idea if this means we will adopt locally or end up in Texas or something but it is neat. It almost feels like the past five months I have not just been spinning my wheels. October makes THREE years trying to give our family our last child. That is LONG time you guys. I want to say I am better and stronger because of these three years but all I can say is this: this baby of ours will be SO LOVED and SO WISHED FOR. I can't even tell you the tears I have cried or the prayers for hope I have prayed. One fine day.... I will get that call and we will jump in a car or on a plane and go meet the baby we have prayed and begged for. And our family will finally be complete. I would like to say to anyone struggling to build a family....don't give up. Exodus 14:14. "The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still."

Perfect Peace

What is perfect peace? It is what I have now, after years of chasing a dream of giving Annelise a little brother or sister. I cannot explain it, because adoption is hard, expensive, and agonizing to love a little person you have to wait for. The song by Laura Story "Perfect Peace" is playing constantly around me during my days spent wondering about our baby. Yesterday we had our second meeting with our social worker. It is taking us awhile to get thru the homestudy but that is because we are purposefully not borrowing money for this adoption, so we are trying to save like crazy between visits when we owe our fees. It was so wonderful asking her lots and lots of questions. She said some birth mothers love to have the adoptive parents in the room with them when the baby is born, and even cut the cord! Oh my I cannot imagine how exciting that would be for me! After years of dreaming about welcoming a new baby into our family, it would be the ultimate in blessings for me. It brings tears to my eyes just dreaming out it. I love this adoption because it is so different than the last adoption. I loved our wait to adopt Annelise, and I learned so much, but it was so FULL of worry and anxiety on my part, because it was the first time we had adopted. Now I have little Annelise running around telling me how much she loves me all day, giving me hugs, and I realize... my worry was for absolutely nothing. Sure, the adjustment period was hard, but oh my, I would do it again 10 times if I could. She is pure joy and I am amazed I get to be her Mother. Next up is our home visit... bring it! :) I am starting to gather pictures of our family and make our books to present to birthmoms. I think I have to make about 10 of them for different states. I am not sure when we will get that call that our baby is on his or her way... but I have this amazing perfect peace in waiting. I can hear God telling me over and over "I've got this!" And I love this perfect peace.

What I know

Let's talk about domestic adoption, shall we? :) I titled this "what I know", because while I am no expert on domestic adoption I have sure learned a whole lot more over the past few months than I had understood before! Let's dispel some myths about domestic adoption too. First off, domestic adoption does not take years and years and years. Unfortunately, domestic adoption has a bad rap with its wait. But I have talked to many, many agencies and guess what, it is actually SO fast it would make your head spin! Now not every single situation is super fast, but we are talking 5 to 18 months (actually the longest I have been quoted is 12 mos., but I am being overly generous) timelines from presenting to birthmoms to having a baby home. That is fast. That is not years and years and years. Second off, every couple that adopts domestically does not have at least one failed adoption match. That is a huge myth. Yes, there are sad failed adoptions. It does happen and it is a risk. But the percentages of that happening with the agencies I have talked to are quite low. MUCH lower than miscarriage rates 25% per pregnancy. Third, open adoption is not super scary and the birthmom will NOT be allowed to come back for her child after you are home, at least not in any of the states where we will work in. We will be working with an agency that only places in the states where the rights have to be signed over to the adoptive parents within 72 hours of the baby being born. So once those rights are signed, our baby is OURS. We will not ever have to worry he or she will be taken back. Daniel and I have weighed the risks of getting to a hospital and having the birthmom change her mind. If that happens, it will be heartbreaking. But it is not something that would ever detour me from wanting to do this. I will be honest, it is my greatest fear about adopting domestically. But the agency that we are pretty sure we are going to sign on with has this rate of failed adoptions....wait for it.... 7%. That is pretty astoundingly low!!! Given that rate we also know percentages generally do not mean as much to us when we had an 89% rate of successfully carrying our last child to term since we made it to 12 weeks with a heartbeat. After you watch the thing happen to you that you assured yourself you were not unlucky enough to have happen, you generally don't get as excited about numbers being on your side. But I am fully prepared to go through a failed adoption if it means it will bring a baby to us. Of course I pray our first baby we think is ours will truly be ours. So these are a few things I know. I know I am excited. Like over the moon excited. I know I am scared. So scared of getting my hopes up again to see them crushed. And I feel God has a little soul out there that needs me as much as I need that little soul. And that is all I need to know.

Getting closer and closer.....

I have been busily working on getting all the requirements finished up for our homestudy. By Monday afternoon everything will be finished up right before our second meeting with our social worker, including our adoptive online training. It has been ALOT of work. I have been extremely scatter brained over the past three weeks. It will be a relief to have that meeting, get our fees paid up to date and just wait on our home visit. I really don't think there is much else to do after Wednesday except home visit and wait on our homestudy to be written up. This is so different from international adoption. I am kinda seeing now the easy part of domestic. I do not have to deal with USCIS or be fingerprinted by homeland security this go around. We are just waiting on our prints back and also social services checks. We are FB official today. :) It was so fun telling the whole world. :) Everyone is so encouraging and it makes me even MORE excited to wait on baby Read with everyone cheering us on and praying for us. What a great day!

Baby Read's life verse

So I have been shown what baby Read's life verse is to be this morning. It is March 1st. The past two Marches in a row I have miscarried. Last March 15th is when we lost our precious Isaiah. I was dreading flipping the calendar to March this morning. When I did, though, I saw the verse for March on my calendar. Isaiah 60:22 "The smallest of them will become a family. The weakest of them a mighty nation. At the right time, I, the Lord, will make it happen quickly." A little background....I could not sleep last night. I was praying God would give me a sign that this adoption is ordained by Him. I do not want to be making my own path. I asked for wisdom. So seeing this verse as soon as I woke up seems like wisdom from God if I ever saw it. "the smallest a FAMILY" "At the right time it will happen quickly".... it sounds as if God is speaking to me about adoption. (and domestic adoption, at that.no other adoption happens quickly) God hears my grief and knows me so well. Isaiah is only used in one month on my calendar, March. God knew I would wake up this morning without a song in my heart because I am so sad we lost our little boy. But He gave me this verse to encourage me. I fully believe He will grant us a baby when it is in His time. I serve a BIG and MIGHTY God and I am so thankful He met me in my grief and assured me He has promises abundant for our family. Praise Him for His love and comfort.

First homestudy meeting complete

I am happy to report we now have our first homestudy meeting finished! :) We met with out social worker for two hours! We now have mounds of more paperwork to fill out and we need to get our physicals and fingerprints. She answered all our questions and actually made us quite excited to see where this journey will take us. She was encouraging with the wait. It seems quite manageable! The whole adoption process is seeming less daunting after meeting with her. The paperwork is a bit overwhelming, but I did it once, I can do it again! :) Funny enough thing the agency here works with an agency in Florida and passes a lot of situations of birthmoms onto the people here. She thought it would be quite neat if we travel to Florida for our child, since I was born in Florida and adopted there as an infant. I have so much to get going on. This will be a busy week for sure! Good kind of busy, though. The kind of busy that leads to exciting future happenings!

Isaiah

When we gave the name Isaiah to the son we lost last year, it was because of a few very special verses in the Bible that spoke to me. The first one is Isaiah 61:3 "to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that He might be glorified." and also Isaiah 66:9 "I will not cause pain without allowing something new to be born" The year anniversary of us losing our son is coming up. I have been touched by reading thru Isaiah and many times I feel God gave me that name to give him because he was going to use those verses to reach me in my grief. As we moved out of trying to get pregnant and into adopting, I am seeing the verses in Isaiah with new light. Some of my favorite adoption verses from Annelise's adoption I am finding are in Isaiah. Like this one 'Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west.I will say to the north 'give them up'! and the the south, 'Do not hold them back' Bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth." Isaiah 43:5-6. That spoke to me when my eyes saw that verse this week. I realized that Isaiah is not just a name I gave my son, Isaiah holds special promises for me. Today in church the pastor spoke from the book of Isaiah. It made me teary eyed when I saw on the screen the word Isaiah. The book has not been preached on really since I lost him. One of the things the pastor said today was "Isaiah was in the Lord's presence" It made me think that our baby boy is in the Lord's presence while we remain here on earth. But it gave me peace. I had a hard time not crying through most of the service. It is just all still a sore subject for me. I wish things had gone differently. But it didn't. As we had the Lord's supper I was praying God would hold my son in Heaven today and also that he would give us our rainbow baby. I began the think back as the pastor prayed to how rainbows come after strong storms. As the prayer ended I looked up at the big screen over the pastor and saw a giant rainbow picture had been placed on it. I began to cry a little again. It was not there when I had shut my eyes. I feel like God is constantly reaching out to me in this really hard wait for our next child. I believe we will have a miracle rainbow baby. I believe all this grief and pain will not last forever. One day I will be able to hear the word Isaiah and not cry. Perhaps God has a baby boy out there for us and he will carry the name for his big brother. A rainbow is a sign of God's promise to us. I believe God holds my future and one day all of this will make sense to me. Isaiah 43:19 "For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?"

First homestudy meeting set

Our first homestudy meeting is set for this Thursday coming up. Our social worker is so incredibly nice. I was not sure what to expect but I am super relaxed after talking with her on the phone. I cannot wait until Thursday to ask lots of questions! There is still so much about domestic adoption I have to learn. I am pretty sure we will be given a massive amount of paperwork to bring home and fill out, along with our fingerprint forms and dr. physicals. The adoption is moving right along! I have no idea how long to expect this homestudy to take. I am guessing it will be faster than an international adoption homestudy, since we do not have to go through homeland security this go around. We shall see!

Thinking about baby

Today about once every ten minutes I remember that we are adopting again! I get so excited whenever I remember this! It is so different from the last time because in certain ways I have less fear and in other ways, I have more. We adopted Ann from South Korea when she was 9 month old. She was so scared it was pitiful. She even spoke several words in Korean. But we never met her birthmom, only the foster family that took care of her. And there was no risk of a birthmom taking her back once we held her. So domestic adoption is different in that way. It is also different in that we will actually be able to adopt our baby out of the hospial as a newborn. That will be so neat to me. Newborns are my very favorite. I am always sad I missed the first part of Ann's life. I wish I had not missed a beat of it. I think about our future baby's birthmom and feel very heartbroken for her. When her heart breaks is when our dreams will come true. That just does not seem fair. The last time we began our adoption with Ann we made the decision we were finished having kids naturally so adopting Ann was the last step in building our family. Then she came home and I knew I was not finished! D and I went back and forth with adopt again or have a baby. We finally settled on have a baby but little did we know how challenging that would be. In the almost three years that she has been home we have tried for two and a half for a baby. I got pregant twice and both times lost our child. It was heartbreaking. The last time we learned it was a son and he had trisomy 18. We named him Isaiah Daniel and if we are blessed with a little boy through this his middle name will be Isaiah, after his big brother in Heaven. After trying for another long year after we lost him we both came to the realization Christmas Day that this was just too much. All the anxiety, heartbreak and loss were not getting us anywhere. Our family is not growing in the way we had hoped. So we both were finally on the same page...adoption. They say strong storms produce rainbows. These past years have been full of strong storms. This baby will be our rainbow.

Here we go!

Today is the first day of our journey to our baby. I mailed out our domestic adoption application along with the fee. Having completed our international adoption with our daughter, I hope to be a little calmer this go around. But who am I really kidding??!!It has been a long journey to get to this step. I have to hope that this all takes us to the delivery room where we will meet our prayed for and SO wished for fourth child. All my hopes for our future were tied up in my application I mailed today. Annelise was with me and I gave her a big high 5 after we mailed it. Here.we.go!