(I wrote this on Wednesday after our meeting with our social worker as a way to help myself process our meeting with her. Now I feel ready to post it.)
Today we met with Eleanor for the first time in her office!
We were very excited to connect with her and keep our home study “ball” rolling! See previous post.
Over the course of the last couple of weeks, we’ve finished the online Hague training requirements and we now only need to complete 4 more visits with Eleanor before she can fill out all the paperwork needed to wrap up the home study process. If all continues to go as we plan (Ha!), all will be done with the home study in May. Once the final paperwork is in our hands, we will begin working on the Dossier.
But today, we learned two pieces of information that honestly feel like a big blow – we’ve definitely gotten the wind knocked out of us.
The first is that it is highly likely that we won’t be able to adopt a baby (one of the reasons we were drawn to Ethiopia in the first place). Eleanor explained that Bethany’s partnerships in Ethiopia at this time do not have many infants that are eligible to be adopted. She said that realistically, we would be lucky to receive a referral for an 18 month old – and even then, she could be two years old before we are able to travel and bring her home.
Secondly, with the speed Ethiopian adoptions are currently moving at, it is likely that we may not be able to travel to pick up our daughter until two years after we have submitted all of our paperwork. It can take 18 months(ish) to receive a referral and another six months to have all the court dates and official processes complete. This also means that when we travel to Ethiopia for our court date, we will get to spend some time with our daughter, and have to leave her and return home for a few months. How painful. This realistically means that we may travel to bring her home two years from this summer. Wow. That is a really long time. We knew that things had slowed down in Ethiopia, but we honestly didn’t think that it would be over two years until we are united as a family.
We really want a baby. For us, considering adopting a toddler is a major paradigm shift. This is not our plan.
We have envisioned snuggling and carrying our little daughter in her baby carrier. Changing her diaper. Feeding her with a bottle, or maybe even breastfeeding her if she is able to learn. I imagined her crawling around in her cute little cloth diapers. We’ve saved all of Karis’ baby clothes in anticipation of her arrival. There are parts of Karis’ passing babyhood that I haven’t fully mourned because I have told myself, “It’s ok. We’ll have another baby.” And then there are the serious and alarming effects that extended time in institutionalized care can have on a child. We know that the younger we bring her home, the less she will be impacted by the realities of her birth living situation (whatever it is).
So what? Did we make a mistake? Did we choose the wrong agency? Internally, I feel like I am throwing a bit of a temper tantrum before the Lord. “Lord, you led us to Bethany. We prayed and asked you to guide us to the right agency, and we believed that you did. But Lord, you KNOW that WE WANT A BABY!!! You KNOW it! What do you mean that it is highly unlikely our daughter will come home to us as an infant??? This is NOT what we thought our adoption journey was going to look like.
There are a few things we are pretty sure of or think we know:
1. We aren’t going to get pregnant to have another baby.
2. Eleanor explained that if we really want a baby, we would be better off switching to the domestic track instead of international. We aren’t going to do that.
3. We could find a new adoption agency in the chance that someone else might be able to offer us the opportunity to adopt an infant. This would mean possibly re-doing the home study, or maybe just parts of it, and the repaying of fees. This doesn’t really sound like a good option either.
4. One factor in choosing to adopt a girl is that we hope that our girls will grow up to have a friendship and sisterly bond with each other – like our boys. If we did bring home an infant in two years, Karis would already be four. The age and developmental difference between the girls might be such that they wouldn’t really play together or be interested in some of the same things at the same time. In this line of thinking, bringing home a two year old makes more sense.
5. I’ll be honest. There have been many days in the last couple of months that I have inwardly groaned at the idea of “starting over” with a baby. Karis is nearly two and heading out of the baby stage. There are definitely aspects of life that get easier the further from babyhood one gets. Also a plus for adopting a toddler.
So. Here is what it comes down to: Do we believe that God knows what He’s doing?
Are we going to trust Him that His plans for us are always best, even when they differ from ours?
Do we believe that God really did lead us to Bethany? That we followed Him there, trusting that the child He chose to be a Davis is waiting somewhere in Bethany’s hands?
Maybe our daughter will be two when we bring her home. Isn’t God also capable of bringing an infant to us through Bethany if He so wills? It’s not probable. But it is possible.
I read this quote earlier this week and it stood out to me. I’m clinging to it now.
“A person who lives on faith must proceed on incomplete evidence, trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse.” -Philip Yancey
I’m reminded that our whole adoption journey is all about faith. Trusting that God is the one who planted the seed of adoption in our hearts, waters it, and continues to supply all we need to continue to move on in the process. We need Him to be with us, reminding us that all of this falls within His original plan and that He will not make a mistake.
In light of the gospel, adoption makes perfect sense. But when we consider it in light of what we are choosing to walk into, to be perfectly honest, at times, it all seems a little nuts. We couldn’t help but wonder as we were driving home from Eleanor’s office, “What are we doing? Why are we choosing to make our lives more challenging than they already are?!”
We are going to spend and raise a lot of money. We are going to travel across the world, and it will be not be a vacation. We are going to get on a plane and fly home – for many hours – with essentially a stranger. We are going to have FOUR children. Our new daughter will not look like us. Not only will our family dynamics change, but the way the world views our family will shift. Let’s be honest, we are opening up a big can of worms here. Our fourth child will not share our DNA, our temperaments will not have been passed down to her (and as a dear friend of mine says, “Genes matter!”). Now we learn that she may very well be two and will carry with her more wounds than we had originally thought we’d be tending to.
Lord, what have we gotten ourselves into? Help us to follow you and not to miss something important. Help us to say “Yes” to whatever your will is for our lives. Even if it’s not what we thought. Even if we have incomplete evidence that this is all going to turn out ok. Even if we don’t bring home a baby.
Waiting For Rain 