Adoption: The Raw Truth of Waiting

We are homestudy complete.  Yay...I guess!  What does that mean exactly.  Well, it means we have completed paperwork and waited and waited and now we are officially WAITING.

Here is the truth about adoption from my perspective.

Everyone has a different story to tell and the journey to adoption takes many different paths.  So, as you read this, keep in mind that this is our journey.  I am not telling you how everyone feels about waiting, just me.

We did not come to adoption through infertility, so I feel like our story is one that is not as common, or at least not as understood and as commonly shared.  We have two biological children and are ready to grow our family.  About a year ago we began to pray and talk about having another baby and God made it very clear to us that He had a plan to grow our family and that plan included adoption.  We couldn't be more thrilled.

So, here we are almost a year later and we are on what seems like a never ending waiting period.  It is hard!  I want nothing more than to have another little love in my home.  Adoption is hard!  It is not a calling for the weak and it can make you weary.  The difference in my experience is this:

Pregnancy went something like this for us...  We decided to have a baby.  We quit preventing pregnancy and began trying to conceive. In a couple of months we were pregnant.  I had great pregnancies; no complications.  I had beautiful births.  I did have to have two c-sections but that is how my little loves were brought into this world.  That is our story and I love it.  I wouldn't change it.  Because of modern medicine, my babies were born and are alive.  Thank you, Lord, for the c-section!  From the thought of wanting and child to the birth was less than a year for both of my children.

Adoption has been more like this...  We began praying about adoption about a year ago.  We went to our first informational meeting in January 2012.  We began the paperwork the very next day.  God poured a peace over us that this was His calling on our life and we ran with it.  We flew through paperwork and background checks.  We made our profile books and scheduled our interviews and our homestudy.  Anything and everything we could do, we have done.  And now, a few months shy of a year since we began  the adoption process, we are finally waiting to be chosen.  We don't have a child yet.  We have no timeline for when we will.  We are just waiting.

Along the way we have had to rely on a lot of other people to do their part for the process to move along.  Of this, I am not a fan!  You see, when we were trying to get pregnant, the only two people that were involved in the process were me and Adam.  Adam and I both felt equally excited about getting pregnant and we both felt very connected to the idea of growing our family, as we should.  Well, I have learned, that people are busy and my desire to have another child is not their desire to have another child.  Therefore, other people do not feel the urgency that I feel to move the process along.

Along the way, I have also learned that it is emotionally draining to know that God has a child, out there, for us, but not to know if that child is born yet, if that child is even conceived yet, if that child's mom is taking care of him or her like they should, will they be ok, is it a him or a her, what race will our child be.  It is almost unbearably hard to, in the deepest part of my heart long for another baby and to realize that I have absolutely no control over having one.  I have given control over to my Heavenly Father and while I know He loves me and I know He has a plan for our family, I do not know what His timeline is or that it will match what I want.  Knowing that He has a plan has not yet changed the aching in my heart hold my little baby, to know where in the world my baby is sleeping tonight or if my baby is even alive yet to be tucked in.

So, the hard part, for me, in adoption, is trusting God.  Trusting His will and His plan.  My uterus is screaming to have another baby and I have to quieten it at the prompting of my God.  It is hard to actively prevent pregnancy every month, when my strongest desire is to have another baby.  It makes no logical since to me.  Everything in my knows that God has called us to adoption. When I dream of our family growing, it is through adoption.  To be honest, I just don't want to wait.  I dream every night of the new little child or children that will run through our home.  I sit at the playground, watching kids, and wonder if my child will look like that or have hair that color or eyes that color.  I wonder when my child will be home and my family whole.

I know many adoptive parents who have had said to them, "Well, at least you got your kids the easy way."  I said it earlier and I will say it again...Adoption is not for the weak or the faint of heart.  This journey has been harder than the journey to having our first two children.  At least when I was pregnant, I knew where my child was and I knew when I was going to meet them.

It is the not knowing that haunts my dreams.