You Can't Hurry Love...
...No, you'll just have to wait. You know, love don't come easy. It's a game of give and take.How long must I wait? How much more can I take? Before loneliness will cause my heat to break...
Okay, enough Phil Collins.
How long must we wait? Well, now that we've graduated from our classes and been fingerprinted, we are waiting for a call from whomever is assigned to be our permanent social worker. He or she will then come out and do our second home study. Then, they will have a month in which to write it up and we will be fully certified.
We have been told not to expect a placement before then, but to anticipate a child before then just-in-case. It's like a dinner party. You put extra plates out for "unexpected" guests, but if you don't anticipate them, you can't put them out. Okay, that might have been even more confusing.
But on our first home visit, we were told to go ahead and get a car seat and a crib just-in-case the placement happens sooner than we expect. So, we have the carseat now, and have a crib waiting to be picked up from our pastor's house. For the unexpected, but anticipated Baby MIA.
They absolutely cannot do a placement until our fingerprints come back processed. We were told that can take anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks. It seems odd to read about print processing taking months in some states, but I suppose that is the case. We are hoping that while our home study is being written up, the prints will come back processed. If it all happens smoothly (which it may not, as the system is known for), we should be waiting for "The Call" in about a month. If they have a baby that really needs to be placed, and they have our prints back and have done our second home study, but just not finished writing it up, we could have a placement.
So, I know it won't happen until after we finish that second home study. When might that be? Well, we hope to get a call by the end of this week, and then schedule it for next week sometime. Hopefully, by September 2nd it will be completed.
So far, in terms of how long we will have to wait for a placement, we have been told "no clue". It is all a waiting game - for a infant or toddler who might be a good match, and whom they anticipate parental rights being terminated. We will only take children who the social workers at least think have a good chance of coming available for adoption. We know we may have to foster several children before one does. But we also know that foster-to-adopt is much faster than just being on the adoption wait list. We've heard stories of couples on the wait list for 3 or 4 years who finally decided to switch to foster-to-adopt, and had to go through several placements, but who were able to adopt within a year.
My girlfriend Megan is throwing us a baby shower on October 7th down in Columbus, GA where I used to live until a year ago. Some of my old students and colleagues from Columbus State want to help out and celebrate our decision. It feels odd because there is no guarantee, and we know so little. Yet, it feels right to have a baby shower. We are, after all, becoming new parents for the first time - this is a momentous event!
It would be great to have a placement by then, and we could ask permission to take the baby with us for the weekend. But we don't expect that to be the case.
In Tamara's Perfect World, we would get a call after we get home from the shower, or even better - while we are in Georgia and could celebrate with our friends. But that would be assuming the system would suddenly work very quickly - and I'm reluctant to assume anything about the system! Yet, I am also reluctant to limit God. He has just blessed us and blessed us so far in this journey - everywhere I turn around He's providing something else to inform us, or show us answers, or provide for the new child. And he's done it in record time. So far, we have waited for nothing. So far, there haven't been any roadblocks and God's timing has been (as it always is) perfect.
I will, of course, keep folks updated as I hear more about when the Home Study #2 will be. Until then, may God watch over all of us anticipating children - and those children who are anticipating us. It is so humbling to see God's hand in all of this.
posted by No Longer In Crisis @ 8/15/2005 10:10:00 AM
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