Counting Our Blessings: Just The Beginning Of A Long Road

I have sat down at this computer so many times to type an update on our adoption. Yet somehow every time I end up staring at a blank page until I eventually just shut the computer. I have so many things on my heart, and it just feels to exhausting to come here and put them down on paper. But that isn't fair to the child that will one day read back on our blog, looking for answers and understanding. It isn't fair to the children that I have right now, who will one day wonder how their parents came to chose adoption. So from here on out I am going to try and do a better job writing down all the details of this long journey.

So far Shaun and I have filled out over 180 pages of paper work. We have answered questions that where hard and sometimes embarrassing to answer. Last Tuesday I took both of our kiddos to have my fingerprints done for our DHR stuff, and then took them to American Family Care to have my physical and blood work to prove to our social worker that I am healthy to parent a child. On Friday Shaun was off work so he drove to the Shelby county sheriffs department with our kids and had fingerprints done also. They were so nice there and even fingerprinted Lillian and John Whitten for fun! He handled his physical Friday afternoon. Our home study is next Monday on the 16th and I am so nervous about it. Nervous is a huge understatement...I feel sick when I think about it.

I thought that the red tape stuff would be the hard part. The paper work, the interviews, the blood work, all of that has been easy compared to the difficulty we have faced emotionally. Last Wednesday at church a song we sang had the words of, "may all those who come behind us find us faithful". Of course when I think of those who come behind us I think of my beautiful children. I know that adoption is something that will forever change their lives in so many ways. God very well might place a child in our lives that is of a different race, He might find us worthy and capable enough to parent a child with disabilities or disease, Shaun and I just don't know what He will entrust us with. All we know is that we will be able to look at our children one day and say, "we were faithful. Even in the darkest and scariest moments, we were faithful". We are so excited where God is taking us, what He is doing in our hearts and in our lives and this adoption is all apart of that.

Tomorrow is our home study! I cannot wait to update you on how everything went...I wonder if our social worker will think that I am crazy if I take pictures of her?!?! This is the just the beginning....

Lillian's finger prints!