Sometimes in the midst of life's craziness, something grabs ahold of your attention. Something that you can't just push away, because it comes back over and over again. Everywhere you look, think, or feel - this theme is reoccuring.
That's what it was like for us and the decision to adopt.
When I was a child I drew a picture of what my family would look like. Naturally, there were multiple kids, however, one child in that picture was an adopted child from China. Back then my scope was rather narrow as to where adopted children could come from, but nevertheless, it has been on my mind then.
I can't speak too much for my husband, but I know he's always been sensitive to adoption as well. His sister always pretend-played about orphans, so it was on her mind and therefore his mind at a young age as well.
Somehow, in His infinite wisdom, God saw fit to put us together to where we are today. I am so blessed to have a husband who has the same mind as I. God brought us together with all our differences, but in this he has intertwined our hearts together towards this passion.
Fast forward to now. When we miscarried with Jaimie and then were pregnant with Kalyna, Albert and I had decided that we would have our two children and then look into adoption to grow our family. I'm not a huge fan of being pregnant, but I love kids and have always wanted to have a family of at least 4. And Albert was a big advocat that there are so many children out there who need good homes. So we were open to the idea. Then all of a sudden everywhere we looked, adoption was the topic. There was a guest speaker at church one weekend and he shared about orphans all over the world - I was definitely ready after that to go to Russia and adopt all the little girls. I would turn on the radio - and the topic was adoption - a family who grew to some crazy number because she first had her 4 or 5 boys and then they started to foster, and ended up adopting many of the kids they fostered. A friend had just finished the adoption process. Our church all of a sudden had an orphan care ministry. And those signs just kept coming.
When Kalyna passed away, I really felt like she was strongly saying, "I am safe. I am loved. I am happy, healthy, no pain, sorrow or sickness will ever touch me. Now go help those who have to go through those things on earth. Walk with them and ease their pain." I know that sounds weird, but I guess I needed her approval to have more children? They will never take her place, but they will become a part of our forever family.
So I made our first call regarding this whole adoption process in August of 2012.
Since then, we had our Orientation meeting at the end of October 2012.
Our initial home visit at the end of November 2012.
We filled out all our initial paperwork and such and were enrolled in the PRIDE training - adoption/fostering course.
PRIDE stands for: Pre-service Training For Prospective Resource Families
(a foster family is also known as a resource family)
We began our PRIDE couse this past Wednesday, so our Pride training goes for 9 sessions - and will take us to the beginning of March 2013.
After our training, we will complete our homestudy - all of our Pride training homework and evaluations will go into our homestudy as well as a couple more home visits and lots of answering questions and such. Then hopefully we will be approved as foster/adoptive parents. Looking forward to that day.
PRIDE will surely be an invaluable course. I think it will even help us in our daily parenting with Micah. I'm really looking forward to gaining so much knowledge in these next 2 months. It's intense and intimidating, but you can tell for sure, that their main purpose is to make sure that everyone is there for the right reasons - want to help kids - and then giving families the tools they need to ensure that placement of children is a sucessful and positive experience for all involved.
At the end of these 9 sessions we are expected to be able to demonstrate a knowledge of and the ability to be able to do these six competencies:
1. Protecting and nurturing children and youth
2. Meeting developmental needs and addressing developmental delays
3. Supporting relationships between children, youth and their families
4. Connecting children and youth to safe, nurturing relationships intended to last a lifetime
5. Participating as a member of the child or youth's professional team
6. Positively reinforcing a child or youth's heritage and cultural identity
It's a lot, but it will be totally worth it, and hopefully will give us the tools to be good parents to the children who are intrusted into our family. We so look forward to meeting those beautiful children.
Well, that's our journey to adoption so far in a nutshell. We are looking forward to see what God has instore for us this year. A verse I read this morning is what I will leave you with:
In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.
~Proverbs 16:9~
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