....and the wait begins...

Today we had our last training meeting with our agency. We received a certificate saying we had completed 10 hours of training which certifies us to be our baby's foster parents. It also completes the requirements of our agency to be able to adopt. We took our profiles with us and delivered them to the agency. That means we are officially waiting. There is nothing else for us to do except read a few required books and figure out how we will pay for it. We found out today there will be some extra expenses involved that we hadn't counted on. You might add that to your prayer list, I had the actual adoption fees figured out, but this extra is throwing me. Especially since there is no way of knowing an exact amount until it's time to pay them. It just includes legal fees and other expenses like if the baby stays in another foster care home before we bring it home. Things that are necessary, but I just hadn't thought about them.

So I guess our official wait time begins today. It's kind of hard for me to determine an actual wait time, because we really have been waiting for a long time already. Of course you can find anything on the web, so I found a ticker to commerate our waiting time - I just don't know which one to use. The first one is our wait time since we've turned in the profile.


This ticker is counting the days since we found out we could start the adoption process.


This ticker is how long it's been since we attended our first adoption meeting with our agency.


This ticker may explain why I almost crawled over the counter at Kinkos. This is how long this whole process of adding another child to our family has taken. I look at this and remember the times I thought the pain was never going to end, but in a way it's hard to believe it's been 2+ years. In another way it's hard to believe that it's only been 2+ years. I think I've forgotten what life was like before we decided we wanted another baby.


Parts of this whole journey have drug by and other parts have flown by. If I'd have known back in June of 2005 what was ahead I don't know that I would've been able to go through it. There were times in the middle that I didn't think I'd make it, but somehow I did. That was such a painful time, but now I wouldn't change anything about our wait. We still have plenty of waiting ahead of us, but for me it's a different kind of wait. There are times that it is probably going to seem pretty long, but I know someday soon I'll look into my baby's eyes and all of this won't matter. I'll know I waited x number of years for that baby. I won't ever forget the wait, and I don't want to , because it was all part of this wonderful journey that God allowed my family to be a part of.