Where Dreams Come True

I think I'm done with the informational posts for now. When I started this blog, I told you that some posts would be informational and others would be more like journaling, sharing my heart. This post falls into the second category.

I am a daydreamer. Big time. I think at least 20% of my brainpower is devoted to daydreaming and planning ahead. I think I mentioned before that I was planning the most minute details of my honeymoon- which day we'd visit which Disney parks, what restaurants we'd go to and what we'd eat while we were there- over a year before the trip. If I have something to look forward to, I plan the heck out of it. The plans are flexible, of course. I'm not planning a schedule, or anything. But I like thinking about what I'm going to do and how I'm going to have fun. I think it comes from an appreciation of knowing what's going to happen, a love of structure, and the simple fact that my life is pretty boring on a day-to-day basis, so looking forward to something is a bit of an escape.

One of the things I like to daydream about is what it will be like when we have a family. Sometimes I'll see something and file it away for later- like when Brandon and I were watching a movie last week, and it took place in Montana, before much of the West was settled.So I'm sitting there, thinking "gosh, that land is beautiful. I want to go there. It'd be amazing to see in person." And then that train of thought turns into "wouldn't it be fun to go on a cross-country trip? We should see if anyone in our family has a camper. I wouldn't want to stay in a tent. When we have kids, we should go camping out west. But we definitely need a camper." I have never really had a desire to go camping before, so I don't know where that came from.

Then there's the big dream- Disney World. Some people think Disney is just kind of fun. Some people think it's overrated and too expensive and not worth it. I adore Disney World. Adore it. I can't think of a better word. Every time I've been there since I got married (three times) I can't help but think, while I'm there, what it will be like when I have my own kids and I get to take them to Disney. I will tell you right now that as soon as I become a mom, I will start saving for a trip to Disney. That's like, number two on my priority list: get a kid, then take said kid to Disney World. I want to do the whole Disney surprise thing, like those videos that go viral from time to time. There was one that was shared recently, where a little boy started crying tears of joy when he found out that he was going to get to go to Disney World! I identify with that kid! Sometimes just seeing one of their commercials makes me tear up! I want to get the Mickey ears and do the character dinners and eat Mickey waffles and get all excited about meeting the characters and watch the parades, all as a family. I'm so excited by the idea of  taking them on my favorite rides and showing them all my favorite things, sharing my excitement with them, and learning what their own favorite things are. I have no idea when it's going to happen, but I am already looking forward to it!

Special.

I'm not super convinced that this post is going to be very coherent. I'm trying to do posts on specific topics, at least for starters, and I wanted to do a post about special needs adoptions. But there is soooo much to say! Let's see how it turns out.

I think a lot of people are nervous about adoption because they think all the kids have something wrong with them. Obviously, there's no guarantee that a biological child will be 100% "perfect" with no problems whatsoever. But it's important to understand that "special needs" in adoption speak can mean a whole bunch of different things. Obviously, there are medically fragile children available for adoption. There are kids who have behavior disorders or mobility issues or developmental delays or disabilities such as blindness and deafness. But in some instances, "special needs" can cover other issues as well. Kids with attention deficit disorder or learning differences can be called "special needs." Kids with minor, fixable issues such as strabismus (also called lazy eye), or cleft lips and palates are special needs. Kids with anxiety are considered special needs- which is ironic because that special need can sometimes be pinned on the fact that a child has lost his or her family in the first place. Kids with food allergies and asthma are special needs. Now, think of your friends with biological children- or your own kids. If your kid has food allergies, would you think of him as special needs? Would you think "if I had to choose, I wouldn't pick this kid because of food allergies?" Nope. So don't be afraid of the term! It could mean just about anything! And it's worth noting that kids are also considered special needs adoptions if they fall into demographic groups that are a little harder to place in families- whether it's a sibling group, if the child is "older" (meaning, like, 7) or an ethnic minority. In my state, two African American sisters, aged 8 and 6, who are perfectly healthy, would be included under the umbrella of special needs adoptions, and therefore would be eligible for more assistance from the government (like, a different stipend rate while they're in foster care.)

At this point I'd like to pause and say that it's really sad that black kids or second graders are considered special needs because white Americans (who, statistically, adopt more children than Americans of other ethnicities) are apparently so bound and determined to adopt little babies who look like them. It's your prerogative, but it's still sad. I digress.

There is an overwhelming chance that mine and Brandon's kids- at least some of them- will be labeled as special needs, because we don't care if our kids are white and we're not doing a fresh-out-of-the-oven infant adoption. Don't be intimidated. I know that at least some of our friends and family members will be. For the more personal portion of this post, I'll tell you a little bit about what our family may look like.

Adoption agencies usually have a sort of survey for prospective parents, asking them how comfortable they are with adopting kids with different special needs. There's a long list of issues, mental, medical, and otherwise, and they may ask you to rate your level of confidence/comfort about the issue. Somewhere in my bookmarks, I have one of these surveys bookmarked- I can't find it right now, but I'll edit this post to include a link if I find it! It's really interesting to look at, in my opinion. It's two pages long and lists a bunch of medical needs in different categories, and asks the potential parents to circle how willing they'd be to adopt a child with that particular need. So there's autoimmune stuff, like allergies (food allergies, seasonal allergies, the kind of allergies that require you to rip out your carpet and install special filters on your air conditioner), mobility issues (braces, crutches, wheelchair), spinal bifida, scoliosis, diabetes, heart problems, HIV/AIDS, hearing impairment....anything and everything you could think of. I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff, and there were things on there that I didn't consider. There were even specific diagnoses listed that I looked up to learn more about. It was interesting and informational.

Anyway. Unless we move, which I don't know that we are going to do soon, we probably won't be adopting a child with mobility issues, at least the first time out. We have no problem with it, other than our bedrooms are on the second floor of our house. Because of safety issues, significant visual impairment is probably also out. I don't think we have an opinion on hearing impairment, though. I don't mind. I don't remember discussing it with Brandon. Learning disabilities? Fine. Anxiety and depression? I feel uniquely qualified to parent a child with those issues. Food allergies and asthma, no problemo. It may be controversial, but we're also perfectly fine adopting a child who is HIV positive. And if that's controversial for you, then that's because you are a little bit uneducated about the disease. The fact that people don't understand it and are afraid of it for no real scientific reason makes me even more willing to adopt a child with that diagnosis. There would have to be a lot of education going on for friends and family members, but I will go on the record now saying that if my child is HIV positive and it comes down to it, we will most definitely cut people out of our lives for making stupid comments or "jokes." It's already a subject that really bothers me and makes me get pretty fired up, and my family is not directly impacted by the disease at this time. More significant intellectual disabilities are on my prayer list. I don't really know how I feel about that right now. And that's ok. I love working with special needs kids, but I'm not sure that I am meant to be the parent of a child with a special need such as Down syndrome, for example. THAT'S FINE. The whole goal of adoption is to be the best parent you can be to a child. That's not to say that God wouldn't give someone the ability and confidence to parent a child with significant special needs after they've spent their life thinking they couldn't do that. That's why it's so, so important to carefully consider all these different options. And pray a lot. Seek God's will. I personally would prefer to go with an adoption agency- or a social worker- who is also a Christian so I could trust that they'd be thinking of these things, too.

I hope that if your heart is open to adoption, it's also open to adopting a child with special needs- maybe you'll give it some extra thought now that you know the term can be applied to just about any kid, for a host of reasons. And my prayer request for this post is that our hearts and minds will stay open to needs that maybe we hadn't considered before, so we don't miss out on the child who is meant for us.

Look at these rainbow cats! Yay!

Putting a Price Tag on Love

Newsflash: adoption costs money.

A lot of people wonder about that. Some people joke and call it "buying a baby" which I thought was funny for a few minutes until I remembered that thing called "human trafficking." And a lot of people make comments about it "just being so expensive" and sometimes they feel that they could never adopt because of the financial cost.

In this post, I'm going to tell you a little about why adoption costs money. And why some adoptions costs so much. And why really, it's not as much as you think.

Let's say that you're going to have a biological child. I hate to break it to you, but those cost money, too. Some people require the aid of prescription meds to get pregnant (not fertility treatments, just a little hormonal nudge to get things going.) Some people also buy ovulation kits (that's the only time I'm going to type that phrase on any of my blogs.) And then pregnancy tests. And then labwork to confirm. And prenatal vitamins. And parenting classes. And Lamaze or natural childbirth classes. Maternity clothes. And monthly doctor's appointments. And then appointments every two weeks. And every week. And every few days.Sonograms and ultrasounds. Hospital bills. And all the little bills that go along with that- if you've ever had a hospital stay, you know what I'm talking about. Charging for each medication, for the one doctor who was "observing" that day, for the anesthesiologist, if you have one....it's never ending. It's not like a hotel, where you come in and pay for the nights you stay, and leave. It's more like a hotel where you didn't realize that there was a mandatory fee for even having towels in your room, and there's a minibar minimum, and oh guess what, you have to pay the maid separately. Surprise! Biological babies are not "free." Friends may joke that you've just signed away all your money for the next 18+ years, but no one ever looks at a newborn in a bassinet and says "she's cute and all, but didn't she cost you a lot of money? How much did you pay to get her?" Weird.

Adoption costs money too. It's a complicated process, and it should be. It should not be super easy to bring a child into your home and make him or her a legal, permanent part of your family. That is actually called kidnapping. But I think that for people who haven't looked into it, there is a lot of mystery surrounding the cost of adoption. Maybe folks think that adoptive parents are just told to write a check to an agency and that money magically makes a child appear. I know there are some people out there who think that at least part of the money is used unethically to pay parents for their children. Or pay orphanages for their children. If you're using a licensed, accredited agency, that's just not the case. As I said before, different kinds of adoptions cost different amounts, but I'm just going to use international adoption as an example here, because I know the most about it and I think it's the one people are most suspicious of.

You know how any time you need to fill out paperwork for the government, it seems like you have to pay a fee? You pay for your driver's license. You pay a car registration fee every year. You pay to get extra copies of paperwork. And it's not just the government- a lot of doctor's offices charge fees for paperwork, too. Fees to get your own medical records. Fees to have the doctor sign a piece of paper saying "yes, she had surgery and needs to stay off work for a few weeks. Fees fees fees. Anytime paperwork is involved, you can expect a fee. Adoption is kind of the same way. There are LOTS of papers to fill out, so there are lots of fees (and again, there SHOULD be lots of papers to fill out. We don't want to kidnap.)

So you start with an application fee. Some places to free "pre-applications" and that's cool. Charging for application fees is not a new thing. If colleges can do it, organizations that build families can do it, too. If you're accepted, you're going to have agency fees, usually divided up into chunks. Again, totally understandable. The agencies employ people who help facilitate your adoption. It's like a realtor. Technically, you could do the work yourself, but it's a lot of facts and laws and rules and papers to keep track of. So someone helps you out. A lot of the agencies I have looked into also include a donation to their orphan care programs in that. Meaning, a portion of the money you're paying the agency to help facilitate your adoption may be distributed among some of the children's homes in that country, to help them with operations costs. I like this part. If it wasn't included, I'd like to think I'd make a donation on my own. In between paying these chunks of fees to your agency, you're going to have paperwork to file. And before you file the paperwork, you've got to obtain papers. You'll need a passport. Medical records. Birth certificate copies. Marriage certificate copies. All of these things cost money to get. And then you have to pay money to mail them, certified, to the right people. And some money somewhere along the way is not only going to your own government for paperwork services, but is also going to your child's country's government for paperwork services. Because paperwork has to be done on both ends. Oh, and don't forget the paperwork involved for a homestudy. If you don't know what that is, it's basically a blanket term to describe the process where someone looks at your life and decides you're able to be a parent. It involves questionnaires, interviews, recommendations from friends and family, and even visits to your home. Social workers are involved. They deserve a paycheck. So there are some more fees. And then there are court proceedings. Some random clerk doesn't just decide that a child can legally be yours, a judge has to do it. And you know, anytime you're dealing with any court system, there are going to be fees (and some of them are paperwork related!) Somewhere along the way lawyers or liaisons are going to be involved. Fees!

So you get matched with a child, and after much waiting and paperwork and mailing things back and forth, you are ready to travel. And guess what? A lot of countries require two trips. So you make your first trip to your child's country. Airfare ain't cheap. You buy your tickets (money!) and hop on a plane. You have to eat while you're in the country. And you can't just sleep on the street. And if you don't speak the language, you're going to need an interpreter (a lot of agencies include these in their facilitation fees, too.) You stay a few days in the country meeting with people and signing paperwork, and you fly back home and wait. If everything goes ok, you get the date for your second trip, the most important one. You buy more plane tickets, only this time, for the trip home, you'll need an extra seat. The second trip to the country is usually a little longer than the first- anywhere between a few days and a few months, depending on the country. More meals and hotels and a few more papers to sign, and you're ready to go home. But wait! I hope you remembered to get your child's passport (fee!) and immigration paperwork (fee!) before you left. Now you're paying fees for three! And when you get home, you're not done. If you want to legally adopt your child in the United States, you'll have to meet with a judge here, too. And a lawyer will help you with that. There will probably be a few more pieces of paperwork here and there. And you have follow-up visits with social workers. Sometimes there are just one or two. Sometimes there are more than that. It depends on the country your child came from. You could even have visits at one, three, six, and 12 months home. Your agency may have had you pay those fees earlier on, but most likely you'll be paying them at the time of the follow-up visits.

It sounds like a lot, doesn't it? Well, it kind of is. That may be a reason why international adoption isn't for everyone. Weirdly enough, though, domestic infant adoption can be just as expensive, if not moreso. You have a lot of the same fees (paperwork! Homestudies!) plus a little bit of travel, and in some cases you may be required to pay for your birthmother's medical care. So you get that fun part to deal with, too.

But before we bring this lesson to a close, let me point out that not all adoption is expensive. I hate it when people say "I can never adopt because I'll never have the money." That doesn't make sense. Adopting from the US foster care system costs little to nothing. There's not nearly as much paperwork involved, because you're not dealing with another government, just your own. You'll still have to have a homestudy, but the nice thing is that we want these kids to be adopted, so that fee is usually waived or reimbursed. The government handles the paperwork. If you want to adopt from another state, you'll still have to fly or drive over and pick up your kid, but that's much more affordable than flying to another country. And you don't need a passport or visas or immigration papers. When you're ready to finalize everything, you'll still need a lawyer, but if your state doesn't provide one at no cost, you can probably get reimbursed for that, too. Until a child is adopted from foster care, the government is their "parent." So they're footing the bill for almost everything involved in this process. I'm friends with or have spoken to several people who have adopted from foster care, and all of them said that the one or two fees they had to pay were so small, they didn't even really notice them and couldn't remember how much they were- and they got reimbursed anyway. So "I can't afford it" isn't really a viable explanation for why more people aren't adopting. It just depends on what kind of adoption you're open to (and I think the foster care topic is deserving of its own post, coming soon.)

I guess the moral of the story is this: yes, adoption is a financial commitment. Big deal. Anyone who has a family is making a financial commitment, whether they birthed their child or adopted them. Yet one of these family-making methods gets a disproportionate amount of criticism, nit-picking, and teasing. The next time you hear someone making a comment about the "cost" of an adopted baby, making fun of a celebrity for "buying" a child, or anything equally misinformed and offensive, maybe take a moment to talk to them about it. Clearing up some of these misconceptions and wrong ideas can only bring more understanding and acceptance for adoptive families, and that's a good thing!

My prayer request for this post is that you pray for all of the families who are currently in the process of adopting their children, that they will be provided for financially and they will have peace about the process. And if you're interested in helping but don't know any families who are currently adopting, check out Reece's Rainbow. This neat website features children who are available for adoption in many different countries, and gives folks the opportunity to make a (tax deductible) donation toward their adoption. If you see a child on there that you'd really like to help, you can donate toward his or her adoption fund. Then, when that child is matched with a family (and some families are made when folks just take the time to poke around the website!) the financial burden is a little bit less. The largest funds are available for medically fragile children, in the hopes that they will be brought out of institutions and into loving homes that much faster.

Darts on the Map

When I tell people that we are adopting our kids, I get one of two responses. The first is "bless your heart" (or sometimes "you are so sweet," which is confusing.) The other is "where from?"

We don't know, at the moment.

We know where we would like to go; we just don't know where we are supposed to go first.

Weirdly enough, Brandon is the one who is a little less cautious on this topic at the moment. His attitude is basically "pick one." And I am the one more hesitant to do that. I want to be 100% certain that we are heading in the right direction the direction that we are supposed to go. I don't want doubts or second thoughts and I want to minimize the potential heartbreak, to be honest.

There are several places we are interested in adopting from. My heart feels like it is being pulled in many directions. The issue is figuring out what we are supposed to do first. There are definitely some top contenders, though. Here's a little bit about them.

The United States

I'm not interested in being the parent of a newborn. If our first child "comes from" around here, it will be a foster care adoption. I have worked with foster kids at the library and volunteering with a group home in the area. I care about these kids. I hate the fact that they're often forgotten- especially the older kids. I think that at least one of our kids will be adopted from foster care. We're just not sure if the first one will be, at this point. One thing to consider would be our preferred age group. Brandon thinks it's a good idea for our first foray into parenthood to be with a younger child- pre-kindergarten. I'd be fine with up to age 8 or 9, though. But it is true that most of the kids in foster care are a little bit older than 3 or 4. Several of them are in sibling groups. Again, I'd love to go ahead and adopt two or three kids at once, but Brandon feels more prepared to take on one kid to start with. And I'm fine with that. I'm glad he has an opinion! :) And really, the ultimate goal is to adopt the child that you have the best ability to parent. Random book recommendation: check out Nia Vardalos's book Instant Mom. It's beautiful. And while you're at it, stop by the US foster kids website and pray for the kids there who are waiting for a permanent home.

India

Ohhhh, India. If you follow my other blog, you may have picked up on my love for India. I've been captivated by the culture since I was a little kid, and saw/read "The Secret Garden" and "A Little Princess" for the first time (which is weird because those are actually books about colonial times there. Still, it's what got me started.) I love India. Love it love it love it. I have so much respect for the people and the culture while at the same time routinely have my heart broken by the plight of kids there, particularly girls. I am getting choked up just thinking about it. I am pretty determined to get to India and bring home a child from there. I'd love to sign them up for cultural classes here in my city, like dance classes, and go out to eat at the Indian restaurants as a family, and try to go back to their home country for a visit every few years. The thing about India, though, is that there are levels of preference for adoptive parents. I read one blogger describe it as its own sort of caste system, but I think saying that minimizes the struggles of those actually living in India's lower castes. Anyway. The top tier is Indian parents living in India. The second tier is Indian parents living outside of India. The bottom tier is everyone else, everywhere else. So the wait might be longer. And it's my understanding that we'd have to be willing to accept a slightly older child or a child with more severe special needs (there will be another post coming up about that!) We'll see how things work out, though.

Haiti

I love Haiti. I love supporting Haiti. I pray for Haiti. I hope that I get to go there someday, whether or not we have a child from there. My interests in Haiti was sparked after the 2010 earthquake, and I am absolutely in love with my little buddy A, who was adopted from there. I think I've prayed for him and about his homecoming more than anyone else in my life. He's been home for almost two years now! I like following the children's home he used to stay at and supporting as many Haitian ministries as I possibly can. Haiti's adoption process takes a loooong time (it's gotten longer and more complicated in recent years) and there is an age requirement for applicants. We're almost old enough now, though, so that might not be a deciding factor in the end. I recommend you check out Children of the Promise, where A lived, and pray for the team there as well as all the precious little babies. I love looking at them. And I love the fact that COTP's primary focus is on keeping families united- many "orphanages" would just go ahead and take a sick child brought in by a parent unable to pay for medical care and put them up for adoption. But COTP's goal is to help the birth family first, and they help the kids get healthy so they can go back home. And that's really neat.

I'm not really going to rule any country out at this point, because if we are truly called to go some place, then that's where we'll go. I can tell you that I am pretty confident that it won't be Eastern Europe, though, or many of the countries in South and Central America. I still care about the kids there and am praying for them, but I don't think we are meant to go there. And there are a couple of countries that I'm starting to look into and read about and see what comes up- countries that hadn't really been on my radar before, like Thailand and Taiwan. We'll see where we land!

Please join me in praying for guidance and discernment. Pray that God will make our path abundantly, blazingly bright and clear, so that we can move forward with confidence and a sense of peace.

The Alleged Virtue

I have made so many new friends since the last time we went through this, that I probably should explain a little bit about what happened in 2012. And I think that some other people who have known us a while might be a little curious, too. So here's your background story.

Brandon and I have been married since January 2, 2010. We lived in an apartment for almost two years, and bought a house on December 23, 2011. We moved in on Christmas Eve. When we first got married, we had talked about giving ourselves six months of married life before becoming parents. And then a year. And then we were still poor, so we said "we'll wait until we have a house." And we got a house. So *I* said "ok, it's time." And Brandon offered a grunt of approval. 

When I say that I made the decision to proceed with adoption, I don't mean that Brandon was against it. Not at all. But he was a little indifferent. And it wasn't something that we really sought God's will about, either. It was like "this is what we want, this is the timetable and schedule that we think is right for us, so we are going to run with it." And on top of that, I don't think that we tried to go where we were supposed to go, either. We decided to go with Ethiopia, not because we loved Ethiopia or felt called to go there, but because it seemed like the fastest, easiest way to get what we wanted. Which sounds terrible, so I'll present it a little bit differently. Many countries have age and income requirements for potentially adoptive parents. Brandon and I had been married less than five years- a requirement for some countries. We were about to turn 24 and 25- some countries have age requirements of at least 27 or 30. And we were going into it with no savings set aside for this endeavor, and international adoption costs money (there's another future blog post.) We also have several friends who have adopted from Ethiopia, and the process seemed so easy and relatively fast, compared to some other countries. That's what we decided. 

I set up an Etsy shop and started making crafts to fund our international adoption. I put that phrase on everything. I tried selling some stuff on ebay- "for our international adoption!" And I did sell a few things on Etsy, but ran into some snags. For one, Etsy is a competitive marketplace run by greedy people who claim to have principles, but conveniently forget about those when they realize that they are making big money off of listing fees and commissions. The thing about Etsy is that everything has to be handmade or vintage. So people sell handmade and vintage stuff. But then other people come along with premade stuff from China (not a stereotype- most of the stuff on there comes from this one website that is actually based in China), selling it for dirt cheap. Half the time they didn't even bother taking a photo, and posted the stock photo from the Chinese website. Etsy allows those sellers to keep selling because they get $0.20 for each item listed to sell, plus a percentage of the sales, plus ad revenue. And some customers didn't catch on to the fact that they were buying something not handmade, or they didn't really care about the rules and just wanted something fun for less. That's where most of Etsy's purchases are going. No one ever really questioned my prices, because they were really fair, but almost all of my customers were people who knew me, because people who didn't were just shopping for random stuff and they're obviously going to go for the biggest bargain. I think I had three customers who were total strangers. And on top of that, after all the fees, shipping, supplies, and what have you, over about 9 months I raised about $200. Not even enough to cover the application fee. 

Around the same time, I started having more problems with my health and had more doctor's appointments to go to. We kept putting off filing the first round of paperwork because we didn't have enough money to cover it, and since things were going so terribly financially, I started to get really worried that even if we scraped together the small first payment, what would happen when the next one was due? It was much bigger. Paperwork is expensive. What if we couldn't raise the money? 

And then things changed. We found out that because there were so, so many children being adopted out of Ethiopia, the government there tightened the restrictions for adoptive parents. I heard that some of the changes applied to parents who had a history of anxiety and depression. I don't blame other countries for setting rules like this, really. I believe that most countries set the rules to make sure that their children are placed in the best, most capable hands possible. And one area that Ethiopia really cracked down on was this one. I'm not mentally unstable and have never been a danger to myself or others because of my issues, but because those diagnoses are in my medical history and any files from my doctors would show that these words apply to me and I've had medication for them, Ethiopia doesn't want me to take care of any of their children. I talked to three separate agencies about this, seeking their advice. And they said that they were really sorry to say it, but they wouldn't bother filing the application and first round of paperwork because an adoption from that country would not happen for me, and those initial fees are non-refundable. Pray about it and pick another country and save our money for that one, they said. 

Since this was happening toward the end of the year, and I was so frustrated about my personal situation and our finances and the lack of enthusiasm for our fundraising, I didn't crash and burn upon getting this bad news. I was already so discouraged that it didn't knock me down that far. And looking back, I can recognize that it is a good thing we didn't proceed at that point. I can say that we probably would have really struggled with the financial aspects and that may have kept us from bringing a child home. I can say that Brandon and I were not ready to be parents at that point, and our relationship wasn't as strong then as it is now. And I can also say that I am not meant to be a mom of an Ethiopian child. Of that I am about 99.9% sure. I'm happy to have sponsor kids there now, and I'm happy to support friends who are adopting from there, but that's not what's supposed to happen for my family. If we had tried to make that happen, I think it would have been like trying to force a square peg in a round hole. It wouldn't have been a good fit. 

Now, almost three years later, we wait. We are much, much closer now to being parents, but there is a cloud of ambiguity about the timing of it all that makes it feel pretty far away some days. I'd rather wait for God's timing and the child that is meant to be mine than to force it to happen on my own terms and wind up in a less than ideal situation, though. I'm not saying that by waiting, we'll get a perfectly healthy child from our first choice country and all this other stuff. But I feel that there are certain things that I'm equipped to deal with, and some things I'm not, and if I don't wait, it might not work out so well. For everyone. It's not just a luck of the draw kind of thing. It's family- it's permanence. And I want to seek and KNOW God's will, and be right where he wants me to be. 

And right now, that's waiting. I realize that this post is getting a little long at this point now, but I do want to share this last bit. I know at least a few people who are wondering "what we're waiting for." And there are some people who say "well if you're waiting until you feel like you can afford a child, you'll be waiting forever." I think that's a little bit true, but there's a big difference in the financial preparations for adopting versus having a biological child. Brandon and I have some specific financial goals that we need to meet in order to feel prepared to move forward with an adoption, and make the financial commitment to do so. I wrote them down in my planner a little while back, when we talked about them and came up with them. 

1. Pay off the medical credit card 
2. Pay off my smallest three student loans
3. Pay off my loan from my Tanzania trip last year
4. Be in a position to have a car payment each month (both our cars are really old, and my car is a two-door with a backseat so small that I don't think it would fit a carseat.) 

Those are the big things. And as of last week, the first one is crossed off the list! Yay! That was really exciting. It's never been a huge bill, but every time it shrinks, something else comes up and it grows back to its original size. This is the first time since we've had it (a few years) that the balance has actually been at $0. This is what we are waiting for. Or working toward. And while we work toward these goals, we are reading and learning and praying and thinking about some other specifics (more on that in another post!) Planning ahead like that helps keep me occupied. Brandon is more focused on the here and now, but I have always felt a need to plan ahead- like how I had picked out what restaurants we'd visit on our honeymoon a year before our wedding. :) 

So here's my prayer request for you for this post. Pray for financial provision and wise decision making. Brandon works so hard to provide for our family, and I do what I can (I've started bidding on Sunday hours at the library to earn some extra income, and am still looking for a second job, to help knock out that debt faster.) But the debt is just sooooo much. It's a lot smaller than it was, but it's just been hanging around for a long time, and it's frustrating to have to commit so much of my income to paying off student loans for a degree that I never got! Argh. But wise decision making is a big thing, too, because sometimes when we DO have extra money, I don't know that we always use it the best we could. A lot of that falls on me. For so long we haven't had money for basic stuff like clothes and food. It's not an exaggeration. So when that extra money is there, I'm so happy to be able to buy groceries that I get too many. Little stuff like that adds up, and I want to be better at it. 

I think the next post will be about where we think we are going, or where we'd like to go, to start our family- so stay tuned! :)