Today was a big day at our household. We mailed off our application for adoption…..Deep breath. I will tell about our reasons for adoption in my next post.
This moment didn’t come as a quick decision or without a lot of sleepless nights. Truth be told the application has been sitting on the desk in our office since Thanksgiving. We just celebrated the 4th of July. This moment was a long time coming.
There are a lot of reasons why the application sat on the desk for so long. But mainly, I guess, it sat there because of fear.
In November we attended an orientation about the newborn domestic adoption process and we were ready to go. Give me a pen and I’ll write a check! Then they had a special time at the end where adoptive families tell their story. They had 5 families. One ended up with twins, one child was born with HIV, and two other families received phone calls that they were chosen and should come to the hospital right away. They had to stop by Walmart to buy a carseat on the way! I put the pen back in my purse. What?!? No notice?!? I watch Lifetime movies. What happened to the birthmom that chooses you and you go to ultrasound appointments and doctor appointments and baby showers together. I’ll do without the part of the movie where she runs off with my husband and jewelry though. Stupid lifetime movies.
All the sudden I was terrified. What if we get a baby in two months, 2 weeks, 2 days? Christmas was around the corner. My husband said lets fill this out when we get home. I pretended to be busy and “forget.” I talked to him the next night and told him how it worried me that it could happen so fast, and I really wanted to wait until after the holidays to fill out the application. He thought I was being a little irrational (nicely put) but agreed with me. Fast forward to after the New Year. My job that I had at the time was a lucrative work from home position that was going to finance our adoption and make money a non issue. And I lost it. Now money was a HUGE issue. And I began to resolve myself to the idea that this might not happen. And more dust piled on the application folder. The money that had been set aside for the application was needed elsewhere. We quit looking at the “steps of payment” and just saw the huge looming end total. $20, 000.00 That may as well of been 20 floppity bajillion dollars. (That’s just a non-sensical term. Don’t google it.)
A deep sadness came over me and settled over my life for a couple of months. I thought this was our family’s path. I thought for sure we were “about our Fathers business.” What happened? And I resolved myself to this just wasn’t gonna happen.
One day the phone rang, and my sweet friend told me about a 4 month baby girl who was being fostered but the foster mother was unable to adopt her. They wanted to find a good Christian home for her to suggest to the court, and were we interested? Uh, YEAH!!!! I talked to my husband and he completely agreed and we began to wait for this foster mom to call us back. And we waited and waited and waited. I promise my whole life was on pause for over 2 weeks. My phone never left my hand. I even found a way to put it in the shower with me. She never called and we found out she decided to adopt the baby girl. And I finally exhaled. Knowing to me was better than not knowing.
Any questions we had about whether we wanted to continue with this or not had been answered. Yes! We want to adopt. If takes 3 years, fine. If we have to raise the money one garage sale at time, fine. But we were going to do this.
I dusted the application folder off and opened it up for the first time in a long time. I filled out the first two pages and then this thought hit me. I can fill this out and get it ready to go but I can’t include a $500 check with it so why bother? And the application folder was closed again and sat back on the desk.
Finally, through some freelance decorating project that literally fell right in my lap, we had the money to send the application off. That joy lasted 15 whole seconds because where would the next $2500.00 come from?
Then I got the grand idea that I would start a business, which is super cute if I do say so myself. Check out Sweet Things by Jillian . I set up my festival booth right next to that corndog stand. Cutest one there too. Funny thing about firework festivals….most people just want a corndog. They weren’t expecting to find flowered hairclips. And the sadness crept in again. How is this gonna work out? God, if you own the cattle on a 1000 hills, could you just give me 4 or 5?
Finally my husband had a come-to-Jesus-meeting with me. He said, “You are looking at everything in light of the finances for this adoption. This is His heart and God is our provider. The order that he establishes does not change. Now fill out the application and write the check.” (That is the short version, but you can still say Amen!) And that’s what I did.
Do I know where the rest is coming from? Nope, sure don’t. But I know where my hope comes from, and that’ll do.
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