Hi, friend! Can you believe 2016 is almost over? During the next couple weeks, I will be posting some of my New Year’s Resolutions as well as my annual Verse of the Year. (You can read about my 2016 verse here and my 2015 verse here.) Stay tuned for those upcoming posts.
But today, I want to share a little bit about our adoption journey. I’m hoping to keep you posted periodically through this blog so that you can follow along with us on our journey to India. 
First of all, I will say that revealing our big adoption announcement was super scary for me. So many things can go wrong in the adoption process. And although the Lord has done a lot of work in my heart regarding people-pleasing, I still worried what others would think when we said we wanted to bring another child into our home. I mean, we do have a full plate over here at the Terrebonne house.
But mostly, our decision came down to obedience. And trust. I don’t know if you are anything like me, but apparently I have to wrestle with the truth of God’s Word every so often.
Many of my fears came from this one question:
Do I trust that God has my best interests at heart?
You see, before this call to adopt from India grabbed hold of me and Peter, we had already planned out the next few years of our lives. We were going to move to Tennessee, build our dream home, and I would go back to work while Peter entered Physical Therapy school. (Don’t worry – we are still planning to move to TN!)
But things kept preventing many of our dreams from coming to fruition. The land we wanted to buy was sold out from under us. Another plot of land that looked available online was actually not available. We couldn’t find any land in the area we wanted to live, and doors kept closing.
Peter and I began asking ourselves this question:
Does God have something different for us? Better for us?
Then India happened.
And our hearts felt at peace for the first time in a long time.
But just because we are at peace doesn’t mean that everything is smooth sailing.
The home study agency that our adoption agency recommended to us no longer has a caseworker in our area, so we had to find a new person to complete our home study.
We didn’t quite meet our goal to sell 100 adoption t-shirts as a fundraiser. And unexpected expenses kept popping up, draining what little amount of money I had managed to save.
I can feel worry creep in when I think about our timeline and how we need to receive a referral for a child before we move; otherwise, we will have to completely start over.
And the mountain of paperwork that needs to be completed is daunting and overwhelming.
Friends, these are not insignificant worries. Frankly, these are worries that keep me up at night. But if I have learned anything over the past 10 years, it’s this:
God’s timing is not our own. And God’s ways
are not our own. And I’m thankful for that.
So here is where we are in the process right now:
- We are working on the mountains of paperwork sent to us from both our adoption agency and our home study agency.
- We have ordered and received certified copies of our birth certificates and our marriage certificate.
- We received my new passport and are waiting on Peter’s to be mailed to us.
- The kids and I have completed our medical evaluations and we are waiting on Peter to complete his. We also need to complete all of our criminal background checks.
- We completed 10 hours of online adoption education training.
- Once all of the paperwork is complete, we can begin our home study meetings.
It has been a lot of work. And since we began all of this during the holiday season, it has been difficult to complete many parts of our paperwork. We are hoping to have all of it turned in by mid-January.
If you feel led, here is how you can pray for us:
a) Pray that we are able to complete our paperwork in a timely manner.
b) Pray that our home study process would proceed smoothly and quickly.
c) Pray that the US and Indian governments would approve our paperwork so that we are able to receive a referral for a child before we move in June.
d) Pray for the child that will one day be ours – that he or she will be well cared for in the orphanage and will feel loved by his/her caregivers.
We are looking forward to how God is going to show up in our family over the next weeks and months. Thank you for sharing in our journey!