Over/Under . . .

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, "This is the way; walk in it." Isaiah 30:21

The most important part of today's post is to let you know who won the over/under bet on how long last night's meeting would last. Bobby had under an hour and a half, and I had over an hour and a half. The winner got to choose where we went for dinner . . . Stay tuned - results will be announced at the end of today's post.

Last night's meeting was good. I can't really say that we learned anything new or had a great AHA moment, but it was really nice to have the first real face-to-face meeting with someone from Florida's Children's Baptist Home. Here's what we did come away with.

Currently the FCBH is not starting any more families through the process until the families currently there are matched up. What that means for us is yes we can still apply and beg and plead pray and hope they are willing to work with us. From there we may be able to take the 10 week MAPP classes required by the state this spring. If not that would be in the summer. We would not be able to start a home study or move beyond that for at least 6 months. From there the process would continue with them showing our profile book to prospective birth moms, being selected, a bunch of legal stuff, an infant "placed" in our home, and then the adoption being finalized anywhere from 6 months to 1 year later. This time line turned out to be even longer than the slow track we thought we were on. However, we're very okay with that. We're just going to trust in the process and take it SL . . . OW . . L . . . . . Y.  It sounds kind of odd to hear them say they are not starting anymore families through the process, but the more I thought about it I'm okay. This means that when they are ready for us (bless their hearts), their case loads won't be quite as busy as if they were trying to work with their current families and continue to add more. Plus, it's not like I can skip to the front of the line before all of the other families who are already waiting anyways.

Also, we walked away with a clear answer. We had been weighing the pros and cons of whether to do a private adoption or through the Foster Care System. Last night we both walked away confident that we wanted to pursue private infant adoption. Farewell, free college tuition to an instate school. Anyone have some pennies they want to share with us so we can start our unborn child's college fund now?

While we are waiting the next long while, we do get to start one fun project for us which is our profile book. This is the book the FCBH will share with birth mothers when they choose a family. There are several options, but we have chosen to create a scrapbook. With my scrapbooking creativity and Bobby's photos, it will be fun to work on it. We may be asking our family and friends for snippets and such for our book so be aware. Bobby is determined for ours to be the absolute best they have ever seen and to have a birth mother choose us. That truly is an amazing thing for someone to say they will choose us to raise their child. If anyone has suggestions about things we need to add to our book please share. Overall, we definitely felt God leading us to the first of many answers, and we are excited to be "walk(ing) in it"

And what you've all been waiting for THE WINNER IS . . . Bobby - Our whole meeting lasted a measly hour. Really? Information that will change our life in an hour? Anyway, dinner was at Buca Di Beppo's. It's been years since we ate their, but we enjoyed an early Valentine's dinner, and will be having leftovers tonight.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

The Week Flew By

Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD - Psalms 27:14

Thank you to everyone who took the time to read our first post, say a word of congratulations or encouragement, and even say a prayer. We feel blessed to have so many people support our decision.

After several messages and phone calls we received a hefty well-informed email and an attachment filled with plenty of information. It was overwhelming and scary wonderful to read everything, but then I started worrying. Finally, Bobby told me that I can worry about stuff when we reach that part of the journey but that we weren't there yet. So here are the three things we know at this point

1) We have a lengthy nice application we need to fill out and submit to the Florida Children's Baptist Home. They have a committee who will review it before the FCBH will even agree to partner with us. I mean truthfully, they could look at our application, say no, and then we're back at square one. Bobby isn't too worried about this happening, but they could still say no, and I feel that I need to plan for all possibilities even this . . .

2) On February 13th we have an orientation meeting to go to in Orlando. After that we should have a lot more information to share and most likely a lot more questions as well. We could have gone to the orientation meeting in Lakeland, but it is not scheduled until the end of March. We don't want to be on the fast track to adoption, but we also know it is too easy to put it off and continue to find a reason to put it off. This is a priority, and we have to attend the orientation before we can submit our application. Why wait any longer?

3) The Florida Children's Baptist Home provides several different types of adoption. There are two major types. First, they match birth mothers with adoptive families and help facilitate private adoptions. They also partner with DCF and facilitate adoptions through that system as well. We were leaning one way, and then after talking about it, we are starting to lean the other way. Both types of adoptions have a number of pros and cons. At this point, we are hoping to get more information on the 13th to help make this decision and be able to sit down face to face with someone from FCBH to make this decision more clear.

Until then, we continue to wait and pray.