It's a No

Several months ago, we applied for an adoption grant through Steven Curtis Chapman's organization, Shoahannah's Hope. Unfortunately, we received word yesterday indicating that we would not be receiving a grant from them.

I also received word from the agency in South Carolina that given our preferences for a baby, we would likely be waiting "a long time." Yes, we know this. We've been waiting. So, I don't know if we will go head with that process or not. It's difficult to decide if we should keep applying different places and spend the money or if we should just keep waiting for LSS. We don't know what to do.

Who Would Have Guessed?

There is a whole network of Church of Christ adoption programs, maternity homes and child & family services. We've asked many people if such a thing existed (or even if there was ONE Church of Christ adoption organization) and no one seemed to know anything about this. How is it that members of the Church of Christ are not familiar with programs such as these -- in their own churches?! One of them is in our state!

You can check out the website at http://www.ccfsa.org/index.htm. You can bet that I'll be investigating each and every one of these places. Some of them give preferential placement to families from the Church of Christ! The more I investigate, the more frustrated I get that we've been waiting for almost 19 months now and there are so many other options that we could have been pursuing. My only hope is that I can be of help to another family out there thinking about adopting or just starting the process.

The Things We Miss

Let me first begin by saying that mourning the fact that we will never have biological children has nothing to do with our excitement about adoption. We are so, so, so excited that we are adopting.

It has nothing to do with other people. We are so, so, so excited when our friends have babies. However, there are certain things that we will miss out on because we are not able to have biological children. Here are some:

• We will never get to surprise our family and friends with the wonderful news that we are expecting.
• We don't get to plan what month of the year would be best to have a baby because it would be a good time to take off work or the weather will be nice (people do this, I'm told).
• I will never be able to feel my baby inside me.
• We will not be the ones in control over how our baby is treated in the womb.
• We will never have a baby shower in anticipation of our baby's arrival (this is because of the timing and uncertainty prior to baby's arrival).
• We will not be able to experience the joy of the ultra sound when we find out if it's a boy or a girl....and immediately go buy gender appropriate stuff!
• I will never get to experience pregnancy cravings (and a legitimate reason to gain weight for once in my life!)
• We will never wonder if the baby is going to look like one of us (although I've heard adoption stories where kids look freakishly like their adopted parents).
• We will never get to talk to our friends about our pregnancy experiences.
• We will never have 100% peace that the baby is ours before the papers are signed...because someone could always change their mind.

Many people try to pretend that there is no loss with infertility because we were never actually pregnant. There is certainly loss -- beyond words. We have been dealing with this loss for 4 + years, and even now, we are occasionally sad over the things we will miss.

We don't want people to feel sorry for us. The whole purpose of me writing about adoption was so that our family and friends could understand what we are going through and those going through the same things would know that they are not alone.

There are a lot of wonderful things about adoption...perhaps better suited for a different post.

Life Book

Our Life Book is finished! Tomorrow, we will mail it, along with our application and money to the maternity home in Ohio. We are so excited! We feel very hopeful that this will open a door for us.

The Life Book is made up of pictures of our life, our family, our home and anything else we wanted to include. Of course, we couldn't resist including some pictures of Charlie.

We also had to include a letter to the Birth Mother. This is the letter that Birth Mothers will read to decide if they want to meet us. That's a lot of pressure. It's difficult to put onto paper why you want to be parents and why you think you would be the best parents to her child. The letter is targeting 15- 16 young girls, as those are the ones who are typically at the maternity home.

Please keep praying for us...pray for this new step, that the birth mothers who look at our Life Book will be led by God to make the right decision. We know that not every birth mother is a right match for us. We are interested in meeting the perfect one that God has chosen for us.

Pre-application sent

We mailed a pre-application (with money) to an agency in South Carolina today. Upon approval from them, we will have to complete more paperwork and send more money, along with a portfolio. We will now start working on the application and life-book for the maternity home in Ohio. Hope to have that done by the end of July.

I heard from another agency in Florida yesterday. I think we might apply there. For those of you that are counting, LSS is #1, South Carolina is #2, Ohio is #3 and Florida would be #4...(don't tell Zeb!). I really liked the place in Texas, but they're not currently accepting applications. Wouldn't 4 babies at once be wonderful!!

I have found incredible peace over the past few weeks by investigating other options and actually applying other places. We are still very aware that we could ultimately get a baby from LSS, but it is comforting to be doing something.

Waiting is the worst part.

Progress

It has been an eventful past week! We have researched many different agencies across the country. I've talked on the phone and looked at web pages. After much thought and consideration, we decided to apply to some more agencies. We narrowed it down to three. Zeb's fear is that we will get 2 babies at the same time or close to the same time; I'm not worried about that one bit!

A major factor in our decision making process was obviously cost. Some agencies want several thousand dollars just to get our name put on the waiting list. Although we hate the fact that money plays a role in all of this, it does.

The first agency is in South Carolina. We almost have all of the initial paperwork completed, and we'll send that off this week.

The second place (and the one we are most excited about), is in Ohio. It's a maternity home. (yes, they do exist) The lady that I talked to is wonderful -- very kind and helpful. She truly has a passion for helping the young girls that come to this home. We support their mission for ministering to young girls. The girls (must be 19 years old or younger) receive counseling while they are there. They cannot have drugs, alcohol or cigarettes while they are at the home. They keep up on their school work. This place just "feels" right for us. The reason I'm not applying to this one first is because I have to put together a lifebook to submit with the application. This is going to take me some time.

The third place is in Texas. I really liked talking with the person there, and they have really good placement rates. The only catch is, once we are on the list, we have to pay $500 per month towards the placement fee. We wouldn't mind doing this, as it's a good payment plan, but we are not interested in throwing all of our eggs into one basket, so we don't really want to completely commit to one place. We are waiting on this place for now....but if I could work something out with the money part (either get a guaranteed refund if we get a baby through another agency or somehow be exempt from making the payments and just pay at placement) we will apply with this place.

Another development....we may be crossing paths with a birthmom (through no agency). This is a long, personal story that I'd rather not go into to, but your continued prayers are appreciated. We honestly have NO idea where any of these paths are leading, but we are just trying to do what God would have us do.