Adoption: Saying Yes

If you’re new to our adoption journey, you can read about the beginning of our journey here – our home study as well as when we went active:

At this point, we have been seeing cases for about three months! Due to the ongoing upheaval in our country, cases have been much slower coming in than they typically are, but we are trusting the Lord even in this.

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If there is a baby He wants to place in our family, He will connect our path with theirs.

We wholeheartedly believe this!

Adoption: Saying Yes

Cases arrive in our email inbox. We never know when they’re coming – it can be anytime day or night. They can even come in on the weekends. For the first few days after going active, I was refreshing my email every 2.5 minutes. That eventually had to stop, but I do still feel pretty tied to watching for those emails to come our way.

When a case comes in, we stop everything we’re doing to review it! Work, school, whatever we’re doing – it all comes to a screeching halt so we can read through the case. With most of them, we can tell pretty quickly if it’s a Yes or a No for us.

The case files we receive include any and all biographical, medical, and social information available to the agency handling the case. Sometimes, there’s a great deal of info – other times, details are limited.

We are pretty open to most situations, but there are some things we don’t feel our family is equipped to handle in our current season. We’ve explained to our older kids that there are other families out there who are prepared to help in ways we simply can not right now…and there may be ways we can help that others can’t. Of course we are open to whatever the Lord has for us – we pray and give serious consideration to each case as it comes in – and yes, there have been times it’s been heartbreaking to say No, but we’ve known it was the right choice. God really has given us peace throughout this process.

When we say yes, it’s pretty exciting, and at this point, we’ve said Yes four times!

• Our first Yes was a baby boy who was due around my oldest son’s birthday.
• We said our second Yes on his birthday – while we were at the beach.
• Our third Yes was almost three weeks ago – we still haven’t heard back on that one.
• Our fourth Yes was late last night – a case came in while we were working.

When we say Yes, that means our profile book is then shown to the expectant mama – our book, along with profile books from all the other families who have also said yes to the same case.

As we were getting started with this process, we were told we would hear a response back within 7-10 days – sometimes it’s more quickly than that (like with the first couple of cases where our profile book was presented), but there are times when it takes longer than that (like with one of the cases we’re waiting to hear back on right now).

We have wanted to make sure our older kids aren’t taking it personally when we receive a No update that the mama has chosen another family. We explain to them that there are many different personal reasons why someone might chose the family they choose – and that in some situations, she maybe never even made it to our profile book.

As cliché as it might sound, we really do emphasize to them that if this is something God has for us, He will intentionally take care of the details –

We can trust Him!

If a mama were to choose our family, that would be considered a match and we would move forward with planning to head to the hospital whenever the baby is born. An expectant mama can change her mind at any point throughout the adoption process. In fact, even following the delivery, she still has a window of time to reconsider prior to signing the final papers – the window of time differs from state to state. This piece of things is a bit complicated for my heart to wrestle with – but God knows that family’s story…and ours…and I refuse to want something that He doesn’t.

The consultants we’re working with partner with multiple different agencies around the country, so the cases we’re seeing are coming from lots of different states. This multi-agency approach allows you to see more cases than if you were working with one single agency. With a setup like this, the average match time is typically 4.5-6 months, but like I said, things are very different in our country right now – and those things have impacted everything…including the adoption process.

Many families respond with a Yes to 60+ cases before there is a match…if there is a match – and we’re on number four! ha!

I’m not saying I never worry about the details…or pace the floor waiting on cases…or pace the floor waiting to hear back on a Yes…or wonder if it’s ever even going to happen at all…mercy, I do! I struggle with anxiety about the whole thing and impatience for sure – but we really do believe that God has been faithful to us at every turn, and we are trusting Him in this process as well.

He never fails.