It has been a fairly common question/assumption that we are adopting because we can't have kids of our own, and while it is certainly a possibility that we won't be able to have children biologically, we are adopting out of a desire to adopt, to start our family through this amazing way.
We are THANKFUL that we get to adopt. We are not bitter because we must adopt, we are grateful because the Lord has called us to adopt. But...this was not always so. AND, it is not always so. There are times (as we've mentioned in previous posts) that we wish we had a more traditional path to starting a family. Yet, through prayer and remembering God's call and on-going faithfulness, we know that adoption is a GET TO. And we are grateful.
This is an important distinction that I think many of us should try and look for: what's something in your life that you look at as a 'have to' that you should, instead, look at a 'get to'? Is there something that is a burden that you could look at as a blessing? Is there a way that you could take some situation in your life that others say 'aw, poor thing' and, instead of feeding on the pity, rejoice that the Lord was gracious enough to let you - YOU! - have that situation?
It is not easy, but easy is boring. Let's rejoice together, Happy Thanksgiving
By His grace, for His glory,
Bethany and Wayne
A chronicle of our journey to bring baby Patterson home
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Monday, November 25, 2013
An update on the process
A little update so you know where things are in the process:
- Scroll down to see a specific update on our Home Study
- We have had another group of you wonderful people donate money toward our next goal of $7800 - THANK YOU!
- We are currently at $2400 toward the $7800 that is due to our adoption agency; the $7800 is our next necessary step in bringing home our child so we can't express how grateful we are for all of you who have joined us in our journey with financial support
- For anyone who is interested, we are asking that for Bethany's birthday (November 30th) and Christmas that we not receive gifts and instead receive donations toward the adoption. Even presents like cute outfits for our little one and diapers and other necessities for new parents we are asking that you hold off on for a little while
- We are hearing from many of you about stories of how adoption has directly affected your life - please keep those coming! They are so encouraging and gives us another glimpse of how we are doing this with the aid of our community
- We have a FAQ section of the blog (click here to head over there) and would love to know how to help answer any questions you may have! We are still very new at all of this but would love to help with anything we can and that means there's no question that is off limits - ask away!
Thanks so much,
Bethany and Wayne
Home study update
Home studies are weird.
What do you have your home studied for? Pass an inspection before selling your house? To make sure you have load-bearing walls where you want to put in new cabinets? To see if that leak is something much worse?
How about to see if you are fit to be parents?
Home studies are weird. But, as we've learned, home studies are necessary. Not the necessary like you need to get a college degree to get a job necessary; necessary like you have to be a woman to have a baby necessary; necessary like you have to wear a helmet to play football; necessary like you have to have to use eggs if you want to make an omelette (don't talk to us about the fake stuff). Necessary like you can't adopt your child unless someone comes to your home and says 'yes, these people are not terrible' and then takes your 13 items (financial documents, background checks, doctors' notes) and says 'yes, these people are still not terrible'.
But, good news, we should get the official results next Monday, December 2nd, that we are NOT terrible people! We got an email today from Debra from Sunshine State Adoption and Home Study Services that said all our paperwork is in, and as long as none of our financial documents come back showing fraud (if we've committed fraud I don't know where the money is...) then we will get our gold seal of approval, which is necessary to continue on with our adoption agency.
We hope you know that in this post we are being silly and sarcastic; we are grateful for the thorough process that parents have to go through so that these darling children are placed in warm and welcoming homes. It can be (and has been) a taxing process but we are grateful for the steps as they have given us new ways to see progress as we pursue our child. We'll keep you posted when we get the official word.
By His grace, for His glory,
Bethany and Wayne
What do you have your home studied for? Pass an inspection before selling your house? To make sure you have load-bearing walls where you want to put in new cabinets? To see if that leak is something much worse?
How about to see if you are fit to be parents?
Home studies are weird. But, as we've learned, home studies are necessary. Not the necessary like you need to get a college degree to get a job necessary; necessary like you have to be a woman to have a baby necessary; necessary like you have to wear a helmet to play football; necessary like you have to have to use eggs if you want to make an omelette (don't talk to us about the fake stuff). Necessary like you can't adopt your child unless someone comes to your home and says 'yes, these people are not terrible' and then takes your 13 items (financial documents, background checks, doctors' notes) and says 'yes, these people are still not terrible'.
But, good news, we should get the official results next Monday, December 2nd, that we are NOT terrible people! We got an email today from Debra from Sunshine State Adoption and Home Study Services that said all our paperwork is in, and as long as none of our financial documents come back showing fraud (if we've committed fraud I don't know where the money is...) then we will get our gold seal of approval, which is necessary to continue on with our adoption agency.
We hope you know that in this post we are being silly and sarcastic; we are grateful for the thorough process that parents have to go through so that these darling children are placed in warm and welcoming homes. It can be (and has been) a taxing process but we are grateful for the steps as they have given us new ways to see progress as we pursue our child. We'll keep you posted when we get the official word.
By His grace, for His glory,
Bethany and Wayne
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Not biology, theology - Tony Merida
By His grace, for His glory,
Bethany and Wayne
Monday, November 18, 2013
Generosity
You people are amazing - we've already received just under $2000 toward bringing Baby Patterson home! We will continue to tell you that this blog is not primarily for raising money, and we know that we can't do this without the assistance of our dear friends and family; so: THANK YOU.
We'll try and regularly keep you posted on where we are funds-wise and what that means in terms of using those funds to bring our child home. Here's where we are as of now:
With the donations taken in, we are about $5700 away from our next payment to our Adoption Agency, or, more directly, we are about $5700 from our agency starting the process of connecting us to potential birth mothers. Obviously that's a huge step in this journey, a point on our radar that is consistently a part of our prayers.
If you have helped us get this far, thank you so much for that blessing and encouragement. If you are interested in helping out, feel free to use the PayPal button on the front page, but please read the 'support raising' page so you know what we're doing with the fund raising portion of this journey. As always, we covet your prayers above your money; our God has called us to this and we are therefore supremely confident in His ability to provide. His mode of provision might well be through your generosity, so we thank you in advance
By His grace, For His glory,
Bethany and Wayne
We'll try and regularly keep you posted on where we are funds-wise and what that means in terms of using those funds to bring our child home. Here's where we are as of now:
With the donations taken in, we are about $5700 away from our next payment to our Adoption Agency, or, more directly, we are about $5700 from our agency starting the process of connecting us to potential birth mothers. Obviously that's a huge step in this journey, a point on our radar that is consistently a part of our prayers.
If you have helped us get this far, thank you so much for that blessing and encouragement. If you are interested in helping out, feel free to use the PayPal button on the front page, but please read the 'support raising' page so you know what we're doing with the fund raising portion of this journey. As always, we covet your prayers above your money; our God has called us to this and we are therefore supremely confident in His ability to provide. His mode of provision might well be through your generosity, so we thank you in advance
By His grace, For His glory,
Bethany and Wayne
Saturday, November 16, 2013
What great lengths
The Gospel is a startling thing. God - the One True and Infinite God of the Universe! - loves us so much that He would go to extreme lengths to show us that love, that we may have a life-changing and everlasting relationship with Himself. So extreme are the lengths that He would pursue us, He pursues through any circumstance, pursues through any work it would take, pursues through paying any cost necessary. We have experienced this pursuing love in very real ways; we desire to show this pursuing love in a very real way.
We have stated that our primary reason for adoption is to show the love God has for His creation - we want our child to know that he or she was pursued long before their birth day, that we desired them to pursue a relationship with him or her through any circumstance, pursuing our child through any work that it takes, pursuing our son or daughter through paying any cost necessary.
By His grace, For His glory,
Bethany and Wayne
We have stated that our primary reason for adoption is to show the love God has for His creation - we want our child to know that he or she was pursued long before their birth day, that we desired them to pursue a relationship with him or her through any circumstance, pursuing our child through any work that it takes, pursuing our son or daughter through paying any cost necessary.
By His grace, For His glory,
Bethany and Wayne
Friday, November 15, 2013
Spotlight on our adoption agency
We've been asked about our adoption agency a few times so we thought we'd write up a post on them - who they are, what they do and why we went with them over other agencies.
We went with an agency called Angel Adoption based out of Illinois. We would love for you to take a few minutes and look around their site (just click on the name in the previous sentence), including the stories of adoptive parents that have had their families grow through adoption. We hope to be one those families someday soon! (Related: if you want to see how you can help us along in that part of our journey, click here to head over to our support page).
We chose to go with Angel for several reasons, but the primary reason was their size and therefore their ability to give us the personal care that we know we need. This is a long process and there are a ton of questions and worries that we have and will have; we needed an agency that we knew would take intentional care to make sure we had those questions answered and those worries addressed. Angel Adoption will do just that.
Additionally, since we are starting our family through adoption, we wanted to experience our child's entire life. We hope that we will get to experience growing our family through a foster-to-adopt program in the future, but we sensed that we just aren't ready for starting our family when we hadn't experienced any parenting at any level. Since Angel specializes in pairing birth mothers with adopting families well before the baby's birth, that made it a natural fit.
Lastly, but certainly not least, we were blown away with the high placement rate for adoptive parents - 95% of parents are paired with a birth mother and go home with a full family. Angel does this by being intentional about which states and agencies they work with: if they've had a bad experience with a birth mother backing out they are unlikely to work with the agency that they found the birth mother through; if a state has a relinquishment law more than 72 hours, Angel doesn't work with them at all; they assign a coordinator to birth parents who will walk through the process with us AND walk through the process with the birth mom once she's picked us - this advocate keeps encouraging the birth mother along, reminding her of what a great choice she is making by having her child and giving him or her the very best life through adoption; choosing Angel had as much to do with knowing that the birth mom would have an advocate as we would.
You'll hear much more about Angel as we navigate this journey with them holding our hands, but hopefully this gives you a good snapshot of a our adoption agency, our primary hand-holders in this process.
By His grace, For His glory,
Bethany and Wayne
We went with an agency called Angel Adoption based out of Illinois. We would love for you to take a few minutes and look around their site (just click on the name in the previous sentence), including the stories of adoptive parents that have had their families grow through adoption. We hope to be one those families someday soon! (Related: if you want to see how you can help us along in that part of our journey, click here to head over to our support page).
We chose to go with Angel for several reasons, but the primary reason was their size and therefore their ability to give us the personal care that we know we need. This is a long process and there are a ton of questions and worries that we have and will have; we needed an agency that we knew would take intentional care to make sure we had those questions answered and those worries addressed. Angel Adoption will do just that.
Additionally, since we are starting our family through adoption, we wanted to experience our child's entire life. We hope that we will get to experience growing our family through a foster-to-adopt program in the future, but we sensed that we just aren't ready for starting our family when we hadn't experienced any parenting at any level. Since Angel specializes in pairing birth mothers with adopting families well before the baby's birth, that made it a natural fit.
Lastly, but certainly not least, we were blown away with the high placement rate for adoptive parents - 95% of parents are paired with a birth mother and go home with a full family. Angel does this by being intentional about which states and agencies they work with: if they've had a bad experience with a birth mother backing out they are unlikely to work with the agency that they found the birth mother through; if a state has a relinquishment law more than 72 hours, Angel doesn't work with them at all; they assign a coordinator to birth parents who will walk through the process with us AND walk through the process with the birth mom once she's picked us - this advocate keeps encouraging the birth mother along, reminding her of what a great choice she is making by having her child and giving him or her the very best life through adoption; choosing Angel had as much to do with knowing that the birth mom would have an advocate as we would.
You'll hear much more about Angel as we navigate this journey with them holding our hands, but hopefully this gives you a good snapshot of a our adoption agency, our primary hand-holders in this process.
By His grace, For His glory,
Bethany and Wayne
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