Home Study Time

Since I last posted, we had two of our home study visits.  Our social worker is Sella and is really laid back and wonderful to work with.  When she arrived, we began some small talk and realized she and I are related.  Two ways.  We do live in Alabama, right? Her first visit was to inspect our home, see that it was safe and that it had plenty of room to house all of us plus more.  We stretched the more.  We could make it work by doing many sets of bunk beds :)  They accepted that.  After all, I'm sure our home is larger than many orphanages housing much more than 6-7 kids.  We are having the home study written to accept up to 3 additional children, 5 years old or younger.  But we are more specifically requesting a group of 2, ages 4 and under. At least one of the children would have a medically correctable special need if we are referred a group of two. By the way, Gavin managed to hold back on suggesting that Sella check the closets for mistreated children.  Thank you, Gavin.

Our social worker told us we could be picking up our precious ones in Colombia by next fall.  Ideally, Brant and I would both like to be in a different house by the time our travel takes place.  That is really not that far away, especially if we decide to build.  This is where you come in.  Please pray for us to have direction about our home.  Or you could also pray for someone to just come forward and hand us a check to buy our house. Then we will be forced into making a timely decision. Problem solved!

After our first home study visit, we had physicals to complete with our doctor along with extensive blood work.  We also received the first of our FBI clearances on our fingerprints.  We are still waiting on the clearances from ABI and the state bureaus of Florida, Tennessee and Ohio since I lived in all of those states as an adult.  After the first home study visit, we each had to provide our social worker with an autobiography.  We had a questionnaire to guide us so we knew what type of things they were expecting it to include.  Each of ours ended up being around 6 pages.  Typed.  No-double spacing.  After submitting these autobiographies, Sella scheduled our second visit which would be 1 1/2 hour individual interviews about the things we wrote.  Lovely.

I have to be honest and tell you that I completely dreaded this interview.  Writing the autobiography was about all the visiting of my past that I wanted to embark on.  But it was inevitable.  Most of you do not know much of my history B.C. (before Christ, before children, before changes).  Some of you know quite a bit.  But none of you know it all.  There was a lot of pain, sorrow, embarrassment and regret in my story.  It was difficult to discuss at best and highly emotional for me.  I have not taken the time at any point before now to really sit and reflect on my life as a whole picture.  The entire journey.  And while it isn't pretty, it is amazing.  The me now looks nothing like the me of years ago.  I hope that is because I'm growing to be more of a reflection of my Lord.  I hope the change in me in the next 15 - 20 years is just as mind-blowing because there is a huge gap between who I am and who I want to be.  I hope that somehow, because of my testimony, someone else finds peace, forgiveness and acceptance with the Lord.

When my interview was over, I walked into the nursery and just rocked in the chair for a while.  This is the song that came on the radio.  This is my story.