updates, updates, updates.

I find it odd and sort of funny that I am in a stage in life that things are changing so much that I am constantly having to update friends and family on the craziness that we call "our life". But I love it anyhow. Apparently God must think I don't like things to be predictable (or he knows I do and likes to throw me for a loop....one of the two ;-) Tonight I will focus the update on the adoption. Later, when I get back from Northern California, I will update the rest of our crazy life and then would love to go back to some topical blogging, The adoption is moving forward, but in a new direction. We received our finalized copy of our Home Study in the mail today ~yay~ and have thus far completed everything needed to move forward in this process. However there is one thing standing in our way. That one thing happens to be very very large. Yup, it's the country of Korea itself. We believe completely that they are shutting down the international adoption program. And rightfully so. They are not a third world county, and have reached the point where they can sustain their own adoptions domestically. They have been talking about this for a few years I guess, but we only knew about it a month after we signed on to adopt from there. Our agency did not tell us anything about it. At all. Not a word. You get my drift. We would soon find out however how truly serious this was. Phone calls to the agency brought no news, they said only "Korea has been threatening this for years, it's not really anything to be concerned about." I believed them.....at first. Now we are getting email updates weekly, about what other families (who are much farther along in the process) are going through. Huge delays (some delays are always to be expected in the adoption process but these were massive), and threats to shut down the whole program. There is much much more to it than that, some of which we are not privileged to discuss, but after much consideration we have decided it is not in anyone's best interest to invest 2 more years, thousands of dollars, and our hearts, to a program that will more than likely shut down right before we are able to actually finalize an adoption from there. We then looked into other countries that our agency offers, and for one reason or another we are not able to do the few they have to offer (several countries are going Hague at the moment and others are having in country turmoil and therefore are temporarily suspended). So we started calling around to other agencies who offered different countries to see if we could switch over to them. I called 6 agencies and every one of them told me that although our home study was just completed, is fully accredited, and legal for use, they would not take our home study as it is their policy to do "their own home studies". As I was calling around and hearing this heartbreaking news, knowing we could not afford to pay for another homestudy only 2 months after paying for the recent one, my heart sank. Then I remembered seeing this adoption agency as I drove down the freeway to see my doctor. I thought for a moment and remembered the name listed on the building. I googled them, gave them a call and asked, without expecting a "yes", if they would take my home study. They asked if it was accredited, I said yes, and they said YES! I told them how wonderful that was and how happy I was to hear that. I then asked "What country programs do you offer for adoptions?". She said "Oh, we don't do international, only domestic." My heart sunk. We had never even considered domestic adoption, and I wasn't sure I was ready to consider it now. I got to talking to the kind lady though and we ended up talking for an hour. I let her know the situation with Korea, our situation with not qualifying for several countries due to age, or travel time or several other reasons. She asked me to come by a week later to come talk about the domestic adoption process and see if I really understood it. I agreed, talked it over with my husband, and went to the meeting a few days ago. We had TONS of questions and they answered them all honestly and openly. We discovered a lot of things we thought wrongly about domestic adoption. For one, we believed that domestic adoption in America was for the rich. Why we thought this, I have no idea. It will end up costing around 10-15 thousand dollars LESS than our Korean adoption would have cost. Secondly, knowing adoption is about so much more than money, we wanted to ask if there was really even a need for us. We had always heard that there was like a 7 year wait list for a baby in America. We assumed that there were all these people who could not have children and only wanted a baby, and wanted one .....well.....primarily white. And since my husband and I were open to children up to 5 and were completely comfortable with children of all the beautiful skin shades of this world, we thought the obvious, and only choice was to do international adoption. The lady informed me that although there are a lot of people wanting to adopt in America, most of them want a healthy, Caucasian newborn, born to a mother with a good medical history. She informed us that there were very few couples who crossed their desks open to children of all races, and of backgrounds with some unknowns. We filled out a questionnaire that asked questions about the baby you would like to adopt. Questions like "what race are you open to?", "would you be willing to adopt a child that is the result of rape?", "do you want a boy or a girl?" . When we answered that we were open to a child of any race, either a boy or girl, and that we were not all that concerned about a child's mothers background, the lady almost teared up. I could not believe her reaction. My thoughts were "How many people are seriously not open to these things??". She answered my unspoken thought the next moment. She said that these were the kind of questionnaires they frame in their office. Jake and I looked at each other thinking "your kidding, right?" We are no hero. We are not even good most of the time. We are selfish, lazy sinners being transformed daily by the power of God and relying on HIS grace to get through each day without falling back into old patterns of sin. BUT, we know the value of a child. That value is not changed by circumstance, color, gender, or abilities. Sooo we told her we were interested and talked about how to start. Here's the crazy part. After we talked about which things to do to get this thing rolling she then said "Normally I ask my clients to get in this paperwork as soon as possible. The sooner your paper work gets on file and your profile gets put out there, the sooner you get matched. BUT since you guys are open to so many variables I would say to hold onto your paperwork until you are absolutely ready to bring home a baby." She said we could be matched within days of posting a profile. W O W. So here we are. Doing a domestic adoption. I never would have thought. Now having said all that, our hopes for helping the least of these are not ending with this adoption. There are so many children in countries sitting in orphanages waiting, that we could not leave it at this. Even though all plans made by man are subject to change, our goal is to adopt a precious baby domestically in America now. Then by the time that child is around 1, my husband and I will BOTH be 30 and will have been married 10 years (two setbacks that work against us with several countries). We hope to then continue our heart for adoption internationally. We should then qualify for several more countries. There's your update. Who would have thought I was going to write a book tonight? sheesh! Other updates to follow soon. Until then, we are off to Northern California for our second vacation in almost 10 years of marriage! We are excited and ready for this break :-)