Home Study in Simple Terms

As you can tell, we have not been diligent bloggers.  I would like to say that is because we have been so busy with the adoption process.  However, things have slowly been moving forward.  Many of you have received a letter from us letting you know we are adopting and trying to raise the funds necessary to complete such an endeavor.  If you did not receive a letter, we may have simply forgot to send one to you so don't think we were trying to avoid you.

We wanted to give you a brief update on where we are in the process.  As mentioned in the heading of this post, we are thick in the Home Study phase.  Many of the initial forms, background checks, fingerprinting, etc have been completed. Now, we are in the home study phase...the phase all prospective adoptive parents are required to participate.  The purpose of a home study is to educate and prepare the family for adoption, evaluate the qualifications of the family for adoption, and attempt to match the family with a child whose needs they can meet.  For Katy and I, much of this started when both of us wrote out our autobiographies.  Imagine taking a 35 question essay test (1 or 2 paragraphs per question).  This is essentially what we did in writing out these autobiographies.  We answered questions about our childhood, our own parents, our interests and desires, our parenting styles, religion and belief systems, and personalities within our own family.  Around 15-17 pages later (single-spaced too), we were finished.  Fortunately, both Katy and I started our autobiographies almost two years ago when we started this process the first time and it didn't feel like we were cramming a thesis into a few days.

As part of our home study, we have been meeting with a social worker who essentially is grading our autobiographies - asking us questions about everything that we wrote.  Many of the questions have felt somewhat invasive and others seems to elicit a defensive response.  However, it seems most of the questions are designed to provide a picture into our ability to be stable parents and to handle a lot of unknowns with a child that didn't get a fair start in life.  At this point, we have completed 4 sessions with our social worker.  Aside from a couple of untimely events where Merritt got hurt running off by herself into the land of big items (neglect) and a bored Stimson denied knowing anything about adopting from Africa, I think things have gone OK.  Our social worker will now create a home study report that we will review prior to her finalizing.  This report will be sent on with our dossier to help locate a match for us.

Things seem to be quiet heading into Christmas.  We hope to have more to share with you soon.  Have a great Christmas and thanks for continuing to support us!

I just had a friend share this excerpt from a book with me.  "Kisses from Katie" by Katie Davis

"Adoption is a redemptive response to tragedy that happens in this broken world. And every single day, it is worth it, because adoption is God's heart. His Word says, "In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will" (Ephesians 1:5). He sets the lonely in families [God makes a home for the lonely] (see Psalm 68:6). . . .  . .Adoption is the reason I can come before God's throne and beg Him for mercy, because He predestined me to be adopted as His child through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will - to the praise of His glorious grace. My family, adoption these children, it is not optional. It is not my good deed for the day; it is not what I am doing to "help out these poor kids." I adopt because God commands me to care for the orphans and the widows in their distress. I adopt because Jesus says that to whom much has been given, much will be demanded (see Luke 12:48) and because whoever finds his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for His sake will find it (see Matthew 10:39). 

I should probably write more often, but it is hard to know what to say, much less what to feel, much much less what to share.  Some days I am excited and other days I wonder what in the world we are doing.  Some days I can't wait, other days I wonder if we can still back out.  And every day I wonder how we will pay for this/him/her.  I wonder how I can love another child as much as I love my biological children.  I wonder if I will regret doing this.  Logically and realistically I know I will come to love this new adopted child equally and completely, and most likely I will wonder how we ever questioned if we should do this or not.  But that is really hard to imagine at this point.  Especially since it seems we are light years away from the final "product", and life is busy enough as it is.  I think going from one child to two I have learned a lot about staying calm amid chaos and even enjoying the happy chaos.  I still don't really know what I want to do with my life, but the one thing I know is this: I like being a mom.  I like being tired at the end of the day from being the best mom that I can be.  That being said- it is time for bed.

Disclaimer:  I have looked at several blogs (some even adoption-specific) lately that are very cute and put-together.  I don't have time for making this look nice, but please imagine some nice backdrops as you are reading and enjoy some ice cream (if you haven't seen forks over knives) while you read.

Welcome to our Adoption Blog

Family and Friends, welcome to our Adoption Blog.  I have to admit, blogging is not a first language for either of us.  We have always felt too busy to blog.  Here we go though...we have  decided to proceed forward with our blog and you have now become our blaudience.

This blog however, is not about what we think necessarily or what we wish we could do. This blog has officially become about what we are doing, namely adopting.  As you may have seen in an earlier blog, short enough to be a tweet, we have officially taken the step to adopt.  While this journey is officially three weeks old, the desire started much earlier for us. In fact, this is our second attempt at adopting.  Our challenges in having kids helped push us over the edge to make adoption a reality.  This has never been a consolation prize for not having kids of our own.  It was just that we were 'done' with the pursuit of trying to have kids of our own after trying for a period of time with our second and we were ready to start the next chapter of our family.  We took the plunge and started process of adopting from Ethiopia.  A week after we started the process, Katy informed me that this whole adoption thing was getting a little complicated as she was pregnant.  Merritt, our daughter, was on the way and our adoption was now on hold.

We are now back in the saddle and have decided to pursue adoption from the Congo.  Our hope is that this blog will be a medium for sharing some of the reasons we have chosen to adopt and why we have decided to adopt from the Congo.  In addition, we expect to learn a lot during this process and hope we can share this process with you, bridging the cultural gaps that are wide for us too right now.  We expect many of you will walk alongside us as we attempt to bring this child into our family and we see it beneficial that you understand as much about this child as you do one of our biological children.  This child will not be the 'adopted child'.  Rather, this child will be our third child. 

Thank you for your support and we look forward to sharing the process with you.

We changed to DRC.  Democratic Republic of Congo. We are adopting a child between the ages of 0-2, either a boy or girl.