Waiting game

We have had quite a few questions from family and friends about the family study! I guess you all get to experience the hurry up and wait process with us!

We finished our 2 meetings in our home with a social worker. He seemed very positive about how he would write his report. He forewarned us that he would be at a conference all of last week so he didn't expect to have our report done any earlier than this week. He HAS to be done by mid-Oct in order to be paid (he is a contract worker with our agency), so he is motivated to get finished also ;). We will get to see his report and sign off on it before he turns it in. I know you all want to know "how long before you adopt after that". You can guess that answer. It depends...

Through this experience we have been learning, and continue to learn, that God often tells us the WHAT he is calling us to, but doesn't always reveal the WHEN. Remember it was almost exactly 3 years ago that Martin and I felt we had a clear calling to adopt. We assumed at that time we would adopt an infant within that year. Then a few months later we had the devastating news that I had cancer again. I was crushed, wondering if I had NOT heard from God after all. But our hearts, the Word of God, the community of Christ followers around us, and the circumstances in our lives continue to point to our call to be parents. He has given us a heart for the fatherless - His heart. It is His call to the entire Church, and some of us fulfill that by adoption.

The delay had many purposes, one was for us to think through more HOW we would adopt and we realized we are not called to adopt the voluntarily placed infant. Through this time He has also prepared us through training provided by the state, led us to an agency that specializes in what we want to do, shown us mercy through loss - the same mercy we will need to have for our future children, and I think has even worked on the hearts of particular family and friends to be ready to extend love in very special ways to our family. We have always had confidence that our children will be accepted and loved by both our families. But events on both sides in the last few years has given all of us (grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins) I think a bigger sense of mission and purpose for what we embark on now!

So, if you get impatient, remember that Abraham and Sarah had to wait MUCH longer than this for their promised Isaac. We are not going to grab at Ishmael - we will wait for our "Isaac" - for God's plan. And in the meantime rejoice that we are not 75 years old and trying to do this!