Lux et umbra vicissum…

Most people who’ve gone through the adoption process will tell you that it tends to go through a cycle: hurry up and get paperwork in, then wait until some agency or government office has done their part before you can do anything else.  Hurry up and wait… hurry up and wait…

Today we reached a HUGE milestone.  We got the first draft of our home study.  Wait, I don’t think I communicated my emotions very well there.

WE GOT THE FIRST DRAFT OF OUR HOME STUDY!!!!

To try to impress upon you the import of this event, let me explain a bit what it means.  It means we’re done with local and state clearances of various sorts.  It means we’ve finished getting visits from our social worker to determine that our family is healthy and well-adjusted.  It means that we don’t have to gather more medical information on all of our family members, reference letters from non-family members, reports from teachers, or former adoption paperwork from the state.  To say that this is the BIGGEST part of the adoption completed would be pretty accurate.

What now?  Well, we sent a few corrections of typos to our social worker and mailed a signed, corrected copy back to her agency’s office.  She’ll make the corrections, print it out, notarize it, and mail it to immigrations and to our adoption agency.  As soon as she has it notarized, we can start applying for grants, notarize the remainder of our dossier papers, and send in the dossier.  When immigrations receives their copy of the home study they’ll contact us to tell us when to come in for their fingerprint background check.  Once that’s done, we literally will just need the money… everything else will be finished.

Does that sound like a lot of things?  Heck, it’s nothing compared to what we had to go through for the home study itself!

The best description of my mood today is that it’s much like what I felt each time I found out I was pregnant.  There’s excitement, anticipation, and a touch of nervousness.  This is really happening!  And I have no doubt in my mind that the Lord will bring us the funds we need somehow.  Grant applications, here I come!