And Now We Wait.....

We've passed another "milestone" in the adoption process this week.....  We've sent our Homestudy to the social workers of several children!

Over the past few weeks (which have been incredibly busy with a visitor in our house and the holidays as well), we've been emailing back and forth with our social worker.  First, I sent her a list of approximately 20 children in our state who are currently available for adoption.  We had read their brief bios on the adoption website and felt there was a chance of a match with our family based on what was written about their situation.

With one child in particular, we learned that the bios are not always accurate.  Without going into any details, what was written about this child's behavior was not what the more in depth (yet still not highly detailed) report revealed.  Disappointing, but something we may have to get used to.  

From our list of 20, we received emails in return with a few more details, especially about what kind of abuse and/or neglect they had experienced, as well as some of their physical, emotional, and behavioral issues. 

We then asked for more information on 10 children..... and all of them turned out to be boys!

My son then created a file with information on each child that we received from the website and the emails from our social worker so we can access that in one location for ease of use later on.

I spoke with our social worker later in the week and received a little more info on each child.  We decided she should send our Homestudy to the social worker of each of the 10 children.  None of the info we received was shocked or scared us off from learning more.  It was all "typical" stuff for children who have experienced trauma and loss.  That doesn't mean that they will be easy children to deal with, but it's all issues that we feel equipped to deal with.

So, as the title of this blog says, now we wait.  For how long, we don't know.  Some of these kids may have no families interested in them, others may have 50.  We may never hear back in reference to some.  The social workers will read our Homestudy and contact our social worker if they feel we could be a potential match for the child.  I honestly don't know what happens if that is the case, but we will soon (or not soon!) find out!

I still have moments of scared.  When the stress and long hours of my husband's job has him falling asleep on the couch at 8pm......When I'm tired and don't want to think about dealing with more children....When I'm annoyed at whatever is annoying me that day....I'm nervous!  But that doesn't change the fact that these kids need homes.....and we have one.....and my kids want this....and I've wanted this for years.....and MOST importantly, my husband wants it....All that lines up as a big YES from God to proceed into this scary, nerve-wracking process..... Knowing that God will be with us through it all!

* Update and confession:

 First the confession..... Many times I write blog posts ahead of time.  I'll take a Saturday when my husband is working and write 1-3 posts.  So, sometimes things have happened in between the blogging and the posting.....

Now the update: We heard from our social worker that the social worker of one of the children we are interested in has read our homestudy and thinks we would be a great match for the child!  She is referring our homestudy to his team to review.  WOW!  Talk about getting nervous!  Even though this may not go any further than the team review, we didn't expect to hear anything this soon and so it really makes us realize that things ARE progressing now!