Our Home Study

Yesterday, we got one more step closer to our adoption. We had our home study with our social worker. I was very nervous and Sunday I could not stop cleaning. Poor Shaun was so sweet and did everything he could to make me feel less stressed about it. Monday morning I got up at 5:00 to go to Panera Bread to get some fresh bagels and muffin tops. I thought that sense our home study was at 9:30 it might be nice to have some breakfast treats, (too bad our social worker turned them down, having already eaten before she came). Lillian, John Whitten and Shaun spent the morning coloring while I ran around looking for one more thing to clean. But thirty minutes before our social worker was scheduled to arrive, we all sat down together and read a passage from Exodus and Psalms. We prayed together and waited for our social worker Amy to arrive. It is very intimidating to have someone come into your home and tell you if it is good enough. One thing I have learned about a domestic adoption is that it makes you feel very vulnerable. Some has to literally say that you are good enough to parent...whats worse is that we ARE already parenting, so lets hope that we are suitable : )

Amy got to our house at 9:30 and pretty much jumped right into the questions. She was at our house for THREE hours, and 2 hours and 55 minutes of that time she was doing nothing but asking questions. She only walked through our house right before she left. She counted smoke alarms (we had plenty thanks to Shaun putting a few more up over the weekend), and made sure our firearm was properly stored. The questions were hard and almost seemed intrusive at times, but I guess that's the point. She asked us a lot or questions about our dating, wedding and marriage. She asked us about the types of things we argued about-apparently we don't argue enough, b/c we didn't really have anything bigger than Shaun putting his clothes in the dirty clothes hamper. She asked us if we "had any examples of something more significant". Some of the questions where hard and some of them where easy to answer. The easiest question to answer was, "Do you think that you both will be able to love an adopted child and treat and adopted child in the same way you love and treat your biological child?"....umm YES! Shaun said it best. His answer to this question was simple. He said, "I believe that God has been growing this love in my heart for many years now. I think about it, and I know that my son or daughter is out there somewhere...now I just need to be patient enough for God to put him or her in my arms and in our home". I don't think I could have said it better my self.

All and all I guess it went as good as it could have. I wish that I had gotten more of a warm and fuzzy feeling for our social worker, but Shaun said that I was reading to much into everything. The next step is for us to do our autobiographies that we will turn in and then we have individual interviews with our social worker, who will ask us questions based on our autobiographies. So I guess Shaun and I will be working on those over the next couple of weeks. 

our home

we had some breakfast treats

Lillian didn't seem nervous about our home study,

 neither did these two guys.

Also, a HUGE thank you to everyone who called and text us on Monday. It really meant SO much to Shaun and I to know that so many people where thinking about and praying for us. My brother Mark, who is in China, even called us that afternoon (middle of the night China time) to ask us how it went. We praise God for putting such a amazing and supportive people in our lives. 

I will help you speak and I will teach you what to say.

Exodus 4:12