Jumping through Hoops

Once the decision is made to adopt, be it international, private, or like in our case fostering to adopt, you are flooded with what can seem like a never ending stream of paperwork. There is paperwork to be filled out that gives an overview of your entire life, your parenting philosphy, your strengths, your needs, you home, your personality, your job, your support network, you get the picture. There is paperwork for everything. Then in order to get licensed after going to class and doing the million pieces of paperwork folks come to your house to have a look.

I like everyone else decided that our licensing worker would do a white glove test, I even took a couple of days off from work to clean my house from top to bottom. This is not necessary. The workers are looking more at how you interact with the family you live with, whether your house has the basic necessities, i.e. water, fridge, silverware, don't laugh it is true. However, I think of all of the steps to get licensed this was the most nerve wracking, would our home and family be good enough. The short answer for the majority of people is yes your home and family are more than good enough, a good licensing worker is able to see your heart, not whether your bathroom rug and shower curtain match, (yes i worried about this).

One difficult part in fostering to adopt is the intrusion into your life. I thought I was prepared to share my life and my family with many different people, but I will admit it has been tough, our boys came to us with a social worker from their county, a casemanager from our agency, guardian ad litems, therapists (past and present), doctors, and psychatrists, not to mention all of those folks supervisors...in order for all of it to work a foster to adopt parent must be willing to work on a team, this is not as easy as it sounds sometimes, because your ideas and the ideas of others of what you think is best may clash. However it is important to remember that not everyone has all of the answers.

Prayer has become such a huge part of this for me, because I have realized that God is the one who will make the ultimate call in what is best and right and my job is to carry that out, even when I have to bite my tongue. Adopting means being teachable. And doing things that you may think are silly, like recording every dose of OTC medicine you give, even if it is only putting neosporin on a booboo, or sitting through a training that pushes into your schedule. The truth is that while we may not think it is necessary, the governing authorities do, so those are hoops we must jump through, because they don't last forever, the adoption will one day be final and because it is so worth it.

Mostly I worried I would not be perfect enough, which is just silly. Agencies are not looking to say no, there are an abundence of children who need parents just like you. The most important thing is be honest with your licensing worker/homestudy writer, they want to work with you and your child(ren) are out there.

As you go through the process just remember yes you are jumping through hoops but in the end it is more than worth it and it is likely you would have been willing to do what you have done 10 times over, when you see your child smile.