When I looked at the phone and saw the Koinonia phone number, I thought Jessica must have finished that last section of paperwork a day early.
There are stories about what was about to take place, but this kind of stuff happens to other people, right?! I was not prepared for what came next. We were NOT certified yet. We were still supposed to be waiting at least three more weeks and waiting was the name of this game, wasn’t it? I mean, we’d spent much of the last seven months…waiting. I was prepared for waiting for the first time. Yet God had other plans.
Jessica wasn’t calling to tell me that she was done. She was calling to tell me we were one of “those people”. The people that for some reason are called BEFORE they are even certified. (Here, I need to make a side note. I fully believe that everyone in this process will get matched/placement, when God has found the child or children that you are meant to be parents to. In some cases that may be parenting those children for a short time and other times it will end in adoption, but either way waiting a minute or two years is waiting, no matter, how excruciating, for your child(ren).)
She told me that she just got an email about THREE little girls that she thought would be perfect for Luke and I. I just about fainted. Three kids at once… and before we were even done being certified. The girls were 1, 3 (actually she was 2 at the time, but would be three by the time we met her), and 4.
Were we interested, she asked??? “Um I have to call Luke,” was my response. What else could I say? Luke had given me authority to say yes and no as I pleased, but we didn’t know calls were going to come so soon (it can take months or even years to be matched). And we had said we would take up to three children, but were we sure? I surely wasn’t at that moment, zero to three is a big jump, crazy if you will. Could we handle three children? Were we ready and able to parent that many kids? Jessica, said she would email me the details on the girls and to call her back ASAP because it is VERY important to get your name in right away.
Now I will let you in on something I did not know when we entered into this process. Your yes does not mean you get the child/children. When you say yes to a child or children, your home study is then placed into the ‘yes’ pile. Social workers typically take 20-40 home studies. This is why you want to say yes quickly. If you take too long, they will not accept your home study. The social worker then narrows it down from there. Therefore, it is possible to say yes to many children and not be placed with any of them. This usually happens with the matching process, but less often if you are doing foster care only.
So I called Luke. He almost had a heart attack.
We prayed, and called Jessica back with a YES!
And then the whole waiting part of this journey was over and everything went speedy fast from there.
HAHA, Just kidding. Nope. Next, we waited weeks for the adoption specialist to pick a family for these sweet girls. This would be the longest and most difficult emotional waiting we would do so far. Would it be us?