So I have this... What do we do now?

First I have to say yay we got our Foster License emailed to us!!! Notice it was approved 2 months ago. Funny. So, in the last month I submitted my PPA out 35 times. Crazy! Out of that we have only received a few bios and out of those bios most of the kids were already placed. We are going to a Matching Event next weekend. Hoping to make some connections with social workers there. I was on an adoption forum earlier and someone wrote about how it took 3 years to get matched.. There is absolutely no way I am waiting 3 years. I am trying to be patient but my patience is wearing very thin. I do not understand this at all... Praying all day that our child(ren) are on their way.
I can not imagine this journey without my friends Kim and Shelli. They had been so supportive of us during this very long journey!!!

1 year, 1 month, 2 weeks and 2 days

That is how long it has taken to get approved to be foster license. What that means is we are approved to have children live in our home. This will help speed along the process once we are chosen for a family. 

It also allows us to take at Legal Risk children as well, if we choose. 

I have had my PPA sent to social workers for 20 different individual or sibling groups. 

We are also putting the word out there if anyone knows of anyone looking for a home for their unborn child we are willing to consider private adoption. 

Keep the prayers coming ya'll! They are very much appreciated! 

Keep Calm and Carry On

There is no use in sitting around any longer pouting... Leah is gone, she is not coming back and I need to just accept that. So, I am back into volunteer mode. I might as well be doing something positive with myself. 

So Tuesday night I am volunteering with the The Right Start- Parenting for Life Program through CHS. Which provides parenting skills, and education using the Nurturing Parent Program curriculum for parents with minimal or no family or financial support who are presently in foster care or will age out of care at 18, or who are already out of foster care. Services are designed to help provide a safe, stable, nurturing environment for their children and to help these parents regain or maintain custody.

I actually donated all of Leah's things to this same group. These girls do not have an support and no one besides this program to show them how to be good parents. I am hoping that I can be part of something that can change their lives and make a difference in their children's lives. 

Saturday, Kim, Nia and I are volunteering at Kid's Against Hunger  for my birthday. We will be packaging up hundreds of dehydrated meals to be sent to those who need it most. 

I have always had a heart for giving. And have been volunteering on and off for a while now. But this week as I sat in Sunday service Bruce again struck a chord. 

 The main passage this week was James 1:27 Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune and to keep oneself unstained by the world.  One of the deep core values of being a Christian is speaking for those who can not speak for themselves. To care for those who can not care for themselves. Those who know me know that I am not one to throw my faith around and talk about what a great Christian I am. Lord knows, I am far from a role model. I cuss like a sailor and make mistakes, but I do try to live my life nobly. Key word is try. Like I mentioned earlier, I have volunteered a lot on and off lately. But when it was good for me.  What spoke to me most this week is giving even when it is not comfortable. When it is not easy. That is why I am choosing to volunteer with the Right Start program. There is a great need for positive people in these girls lives and this will be the most uncomfortable place for me to volunteer. With all of the troubles I have had with not being able to have a baby and then the situation with Leah falling apart, helping a group of teen moms will be the most out of my comfort zone as I can get. But it is what has presented itself to me today and I am going to take it on. 

Maybe I will fail miserably at it, but I am going to try.
Sitting around waiting for a family is not doing me any good, so I am going to try and help as many families get on track as I can. 

So with that being said, I am signing off for the night :) 

Just when you think it is going to get easier...

The whole time you are going through getting your PPA (Home Study) approved you keep thinking "If I can just get approved, we will be able to get our kids!". 

That was another big misconception we had. There is a new movement in adoption from foster care. They are no longer looking for children for families, but are looking for families for children. I understand the concept behind this and it sounds good on paper. But the reality is it makes the process so much longer. 

And unfortunately some families may never get kids. This was very disheartening to hear.

The process as far as I can tell goes like this... if you find a child's brief online bio you are interested in you tell your social worker, they in turn send your PPA to the social worker f the child. That social worker than has to review all the PPA's of different families and narrow it down to potential families. You can't even get a full bio on a child unless you are picked as a potential family. And for several of the sibling groups we have put in for, over 60 families applied for the same kids...so the chances of getting picked are not great. Not as bad as hitting the lottery, but still 1 in 60 are still pretty crappy odds. :(

What I wonder about is there are thousands of children available for adoption, but less than 200 listed online. How do you get matched with others? There is no one out there looking to help with this process, and being proactive and sending your own PPA out is frowned upon. I am a doer and I am having a hard time leaving the fate of my family in the hands of a social worker that has too many families to get approved and find children for.

So, the sad reality is I don't see our family coming together any time soon. It is very sad. I look at the kid's rooms, that have been sitting there ready for children to be in there. I am sorry I am a downer, but I swore I would be true to the experience...the good's and the bad's. Unfortunately, we are just in the bad spot right now.
For now, I read as much as I can on adoption issues such as attachment and spend time around people I care about. I am so grateful for my fabulous family and friends. Without them, I don't believe we would make it through this process. For now I just pray and have faith that everything is happening how it should.

Special Thanks to Amy for the cd she made with this fabulous song. 

Time to Rebuild

So, we met with our social worker and her supervisor last evening to talk about moving forward. We discussed a lot of different things. The movement in is now Finding Families for Children not Finding Children for Families. With that being said they also shared that not everyone will get to adopt. They gave an example of a 5 & 3 year old sibling group that we inquired about...there were over 60 families who wanted to be considered. 65!! That is so crazy, but it is reality!

As disappointed as I may be in recent events with Tiny, I have a peace that it is ok and Tiny is where she needs to be. Maybe her bio-mom will do what she needs to do and she will get her back. I can pray for that for her. I really feel like my purpose was to get her through her medical needs. For those who do not know, Tiny had some pretty bad respiratory issues while with us and we spent many hours doing nebulizer treatments and had many Dr visits in a short amount of time. Her crisis period has subsided and she is in a theraputic foster home that can monitor and continue to treat her respiratory issues.

As for us, we are hitting the pavement hard with looking for our future children. We are registered with Adoptuskids and NCKids. We were sent a couple of potential matches. There was a sibling group here in NC that was sent to me as a potential match. A boy 13 and a girl 9. No emotional problems, both excel in school, like animals, being active and most importantly affectionate and wanting to be adopted. The more research I have done, the more I have seen how many kids don't want to be adopted. They have an idealized vision that they will go back to biofamily and everything will be fine.  I did an inquiry on the children and was asked to submit my home study to see if we could be a match. I was told that if we looked like a potential match that they would forward our home study to the children;s social worker. And I was told to check back sometime next week. Within 20 minutes I had an email that we looked like a potential match and that she was forward us on.

So We are pretty excited.  Keep us in your prayers and thoughts.

Devastation

Devastate: : to reduce to chaos, disorder, or helplessness.
This would be the perfect definition of the results of the day.


As I thought it would, last weeks family planning meeting set off a chain of events that brought our whole process to a complete stop and then reverse. 
The comments that were made during that meeting in hopes of supporting kinship care being transferred to me backfired in a major way. During the meeting Grandma said that she could not take care of the 2 girls together, that is why she wants me to take care of Tiny. 
That is what started the path to Tiny being transferred to a kinship home back in the county she came from. 
We got news yesterday that DSS was coming today to get her to move her back there. 
That is when we started on a legal wild goose chase. Ultimately we ended up in a lawyers office and Grandma had an approval from a judge on an emergency temporary custody. 30 minutes later we get a call that the judge spoke to DSS and that he tore up the signed custody order. 
Tiny is now on her way back to the county she came from and Cris & I are left with nothing, but a house full of reminders that she was here. 


I am telling myself that there is a reason this happened. Maybe Tiny was here just to get healthy. I am not sure why, but there is a reason it did not work out. I come back to a sermon that Pastor Bruce gave, and I know I have mentioned it before. Sometimes you just don't get what you want. 
I still trust that God has a plan for us and adoption is how we are going to build our family. 
We might be knocked down, but we are not knocked out.