What a Day!

Monday.....What a day it was!

My husband and I woke up bright and early and braved rush hour traffic and rain to drive over 3 hours for several meetings regarding our adoption from foster care.  We left the house at 7:30am and finally returned home just after 10:30pm.

Because this child has not been placed with us, I will not be using his real name, nor give out any information about him due to confidentiality issues.  Let's just call him "the boy" or "him", etc.... Sounds impersonal, I know, but I'm not creative enough to come up with anything better than that!

So, we met with his teachers at his school, along with his social worker and his foster mom.  All 4 of us were waiting in the hallway for his teacher when we saw him walking down the hall with his class!  He said hi to his social worker and foster mom and made eye contact with us, but didn't seem to really notice us.  It was still nice to see him face to face.

The teacher meeting was informative.  We met with 4 of his teachers, so it gave us insight into how they provide services for his particular needs.  After that, we met with his therapist and learned a little more about him and the progress he has made in therapy.  We also were reminded that he would need a slow transition our home but that both his foster family and therapist would help with the transition.

After those meetings, we had a pleasant surprise!  We were able to go to his foster home and hang out with him for about an hour!  We were introduced as friends of his social worker and foster mom and we played with him and saw his room.  It was low key, but lots of fun!

We will be proceeding with adoption and have plans in the works for a return trip next month where we'll get to spend a few hours over 2 days with him.  Then we might be able to work it out for him to visit us with his foster parents sometime after that.

There were some tears in the meetings yesterday.....From one of his teachers, from his foster mom, his social worker and even one from me!  It is clear that these adults in his life love him and want the best for him and that is good for us to know.  He has his issues, as every child who has been through trauma does.  But we feel better prepared to address these issues when he joins our family.  No word on exactly when that would be, but more than likely not before the end of the school year.

Please continue to pray for our family as we go forward with the adoption.  Pray as well that God would prepare this young boy for the transition into our home, as he doesn't quite understand the concept of adoption and he loves his foster family!

We'll update more as we progress!