IT'S A BOY...part 2

Ahhhhh, peace and quiet. Everyone else is out of the house for a couple of hours. It's the only time I can coherently collect my thoughts. It doesn't happen often. Actually I have my most profound thoughts when I'm running. I went six miles today which takes me nearly an hour and my ipod wasn't charged, so I had plenty of quiet time to think. In my mind I very eloquently composed the rest of the story. Unfortunately as soon as I stepped into the house some kind of vacuum must have sucked every word from my brain. I wish I could carry a tape recorder with me when I'm running, but I can't speak and run at the same time. The only thing I would capture on tape would be heavy breathing. Maybe if I had some sort of device that could record my thoughts; that probably wouldn't be too good either :) So I will do my best to continue the story...



O.K. so Darin and I spent the weekend in Chicago. Obviously we talked a lot about the whole idea of adoption, these two boys in particular, how this would affect our girls, if we were prepared for the emotional stuff that comes with older children, if two boys from Colombia would even want to be thrown into a family of teen age girls, can we afford this,...I can't even remember all of the questions that came to our minds that weekend. We prayed about it individually and together and our hearts kept saying, "YES!! Do this! You don't have to have all of the answers to all of your questions rights now. " We felt like God was telling us to trust Him, this was His plan for our family.



When we got home we began to tell the girls the whole story. We had told them that adoption was something that we felt God was calling us to do, but we hadn't given them any details up to this point or gotten their input on the matter. Their reactions were positive, but mixed. I hope they will each post their thoughts and feelings on this blog for you all to read, because they really blew us away with their maturity and incite. So after praying about it with them and getting their "blessing", we made the call and officially started the "marathon of paperwork".



This has been a very frustrating part of the process for us all. Once we made the decision to include these boys in our family, we immediately fell in love with them and wanted to go get them right away. That was a year ago. I don't want to bore you with all of the details, but we've had to collect multiple official, notarized and apostilled (which isn't even in the dictionary. I'll tell you a funny story about that another time) copies of every birth certificate, marriage license, passport, driver's license, medical record, letters of recommendation, numerous applications and forms, 3 different sets of fingerprints from 3 different places, etc, etc; and send them all over the country. Some of them had to be redone or reordered. We had to amend several things when Alex turned 18, because she then became another adult living in the home. We had to have a home visit/inspection, health checkups, and psychological testing. This is a story I hope the girls will share with you. Their experiences with the "psycho doctor", as he came to be referred to in our family, are quite humorous:)



So once we had gathered and mailed all of the required forms to the proper places, we waited. And waited and waited. Our paperwork was at the US Immigration office on October 1st. And we waited and we waited. We finally received notice last Wednesday (February 25th) that we have been approved by the U.S. for a foreign adoption! We think things will move quickly now! And we wait and we wait. A week later and we still have not received the approval letter in the mail that we must send to get translated and then send on to Colombia.



So that, in a nutshell, is where we are today. What happens next? Once Colombia receives our approval letter, they take it to their committee meeting (which only happen randomly 2-3 times/month) for their approval and official match of us to the boys. At that point they will tell the boys that there is a family that wants to adopt them. We will then send them scrapbooks that we've been working on, so they can begin to get acquainted with us before we show up in Colombia to bring them to Illinois. I would think that it would take some time to get used to the idea! In the mean time we will be filling out even more paperwork that must once again go through the US Immigration office giving us permission to travel to Colombia and bring the boys back as U.S. citizens. Once that is approved there will be the hustle and bustle of getting plane tickets, packing, and getting my mom out here to farm-sit for us. Colombia requires that we are down there from 4-6 weeks to complete the adoption. I don't even know how to begin to prepare for being down there that long.



But to back up just a little bit...during this whole year of waiting and waiting we have questioned ourselves over and over. Are we sure we know what we are getting into? Do we know how to raise boys? Do we have enough energy for boys? Is this going to be hard on the girls? What if they hate it here? How are we going to communicate with them? How do we tell them about the love Jesus has for them in a way they can understand? How do we instill our values in them since they are so much older? Will I be able to home school them or will it be best for them to go to school? What if they reject me? What if they reject God? What if they are angry with us for taking them away from everything they know? The list goes on and on. But when I sit quietly and listen to God's answers (not mine) to all of my questions, I seem to hear Him say, "Just love them. Just love them. Love them like I have loved you. Just love them." It seems so simple. And maybe it is. Isn't that good advice for any relationship? When I leave this earth that is what I want people to say about me, "She loved well!"



Beth