Bring on the Paperwork

Hello friends,

It has been a good little while since I have updated ye olde blog about our adoption progress...

But before the update, I want to send a great big THANK YOU for all the support that we received for our benefit dinner. It was an incredible witness of the love and support for our family and, frankly, it was just a lot of fun.

So... Update: Over the past few months, we have been waiting. That is the best way I know how to describe it.

We were ready to jump in with both feet when we announced that we were going to begin fundraising again last summer. R-E-A-D-Y, let me tell you. We were researching and planning--we went to half a dozen adoption orientations, we had phone conferences with consultants and we narrowed it down to a couple that we liked and then we narrowed it down again and started praying about it. We were ready (well, as ready as anyone can be) to be parents again and we were ready for Mary to be a great big sister. 

But then... we waited. We became aware of a possible designated adoption situation in October, and had the privilege of meeting the lovely mother in November. So, we stopped and we waited. God told us to slow down and so we did.

If I was to write our next adoption story, we would have a designated adoption with someone who would be able to get to know us, trust us, and love us before she made the life-changing and impossible decision of letting us be her child's parents. Someone who didn't pick us out of a pile of books but from someone who could vouch for our character and our love for any child for whom we get to be parents. Someone who could know that we would love them like family--for better or worse, for richer for poorer--because we love the child that comes from them. 

It is probably how I would feel about online dating. I am not sure that Tim would have picked me from a profile, a couple of lines and a few pictures or if he would have swiped away. I don't know if I would have picked him. It isn't a great analogy, but in a way, adoption is like a marriage--it is a fusing of--an extending of--one's family, through the love of a child.

But I don't get to write our story, God does. And sometimes you find your soulmate online. The young woman we met decided to parent, like the many other possible adoptions that we have been connected to, and prayed for over the past few years. And so here we are reminding ourselves that God's timing is perfect, knowing that he had us put on the brakes and pray (and continue to pray) especially for this young family, and we are continuing to hope that God has a child and a family in mind for ours. And that it will be a perfectly imperfect as adoption can be.

More details to come--I know you are on the edge of your seat.

Pray for us as we paperwork. I don't know if that is a verb, but it should be.

Here we go!

God bless you.
Jessi + Tim