Month 12

That’s right! Today is the anniversary of the day Mark and I received the wonderful news that we were approved and officially placed on the wait list to adopt siblings from Ethiopia. We have officially been waiting a full year, unofficially a year and six months, which is a lot longer than we thought we'd have to wait, and I'm pretty sure longer than any other family with our agency, but not nearly as long as many families have waited with other agencies. I chuckle now to think of all the things I tried to do to make this process go faster. Truly this is out of my hands and in the hands of something/someone much bigger than little ol’ control freak me. I thought I got that before, but I don’t think I really did until this past month.

I cannot tell a lie, this past month has been tough. Some of the challenges have been related to the length of time we have been waiting, and others have been related to some unexpected calls that we received from our agency. I really believed that I had thought through all the possible scenarios of how this was going to go down, but I missed this scenario completely and that caught me off guard. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to tell this story, but then I was inspired by the honesty of this person when she wrote this and I think our story might actually help someone else some day so here it is.

Typically how it works is that our agency matches a family with a child or children, and then lots of stuff goes on behind the scenes to make sure that the child(ren) are truly available for that family to pursue. Things like the birth family interview, developmental evaluation, medical tests and I think maybe some paperwork all typically happen without the family knowing anything about being matched. Sometimes that behind the scenes stuff can take a few months, especially if a family has requested a second PCR test, and often the child(ren) have been in Gladney’s care for some time before the family is called with their referral (that’s when you find out who you have been matched with, get to see pictures, learn their history, health, etc.). Typically the referral call is the only call a family receives.

Much to our shock and dismay, a month ago we received a different kind of call, and learned that we still had not even been matched. Because we had waited such a long time and because there still were no siblings available within our age preference, our agency called while they were in the process of trying to match us to ask if we wanted to up our age preference. Over a year ago, we intentionally had our home study written to allow exactly this to happen, but truthfully we never dreamed that it would and we had sort of forgotten about it until we got this call.

Let me back up a bit. About 15 months ago, while we were in the midst of doing our home study, we had a conversation with Belay, the head of our agency’s program in Ethiopia. In that conversation he confirmed that the wait for a young sibling pair was unpredictable and that it really depended on who else was on the waitlist ahead of us and what children were available when our turn came up. He pointed out that sometimes children became available that were just slightly outside a family’s age preference, especially if that preference was in the extremely popular 0 – 12 month range, but if their home study only approved them for children up to 12 months of age he couldn’t even tell the family about the slightly older children. He said that once he had 15 month old twins with no family to adopt them in spite of the fact that several families were waiting for an infant or twins 0-12 months.

We took that conversation to heart and in order to keep our options open, we had our home study written to approve us for two children 0 – 5 years of age. Then when it came time to specify our preference, we asked our agency to match us with siblings who were 0-15 and 0-39 months old (originally we had it at 0-12 and 0-30 but we upped it in April hoping to speed things up. Chuckling again…you can’t blame a girl for trying!). Typically families are matched with children within their specified preference. In fact, I can't think of any stories where that did not happen, which is why I was caught off guard when our caseworker called.

It must be said that we are glad Gladney is handeling our case this way, and we trust that everything is going to work out just as it should in time, but we can see why most families are shielded from this stage of the process.

I don’t mean to be mysterious, but for many reasons I cannot reveal all the details of the calls we have had with our caseworker over the past month. Suffice it to say that we have increased our age range in order to pursue a specific sibling pair that might become available. We have not seen their faces and we don’t know much about them other than their approximate ages, and we don't know when we will learn more. To get an idea of what I mean by might become available, head over here and console this amazing family who apparently has been having similar conversations with their caseworker.

So, we wait some more, but we’ve had a small preview into what might be to come, and we are holding our breath, hoping that this next call is good news and that it comes soon. Stay tuned!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the meantime, please also head over here, to the blog of my wait list buddy, Beka – my wait list TWIN actually because we went on the wait list the same day, exactly one year ago today. Beka, is anxiously awaiting news of whether she and her husband passed court in Ethiopia last night. If you read her post on December 10th I won’t have to tell you how amazing she is. Who has the presence of mind, after waiting so very long to bring her son home, to so graciously think of others on a night like that?! My beloved wait list twin, Beka, that’s who. I am blessed.