Praying for the next one

It's hard to know how much to share about our adoption journeys because this blog is public.  I have no idea who is reading it, if people like Luke's birth family could ever find it.  But it's also a rather important part of our lives and I don't think it's something most of our close acquaintances have dealt with.  So I want to share parts of it without getting into the nitty gritty feelings of it all.  We feel incredibly blessed every day to have Luke in our lives.  When he starts to get on my nerves I think back to when we first found out about him, about all the people who had to make decisions completely independent of us, for us to become his parents.  It's an incredible thing that we are a family.  God certainly had His hand in the process.

A little over 2 months ago I shared that we had restarted the adoption process shortly after Luke's birthday.   We were approved quickly but then had to put everything on hold while I was on crutches.  Now I am walking again which means our adoption journey is back on track.

Matt redid our complete profile and we spent an evening together updating all the texts.  To be honest, some was a complete copy and paste from the first one, just changing things from "us" to "our family", etc.  We did do all new pictures though and Luke is heavily featured.  It was hard to figure out how much to say about him though, we want any prospective birth mothers to know we have a son (obviously, very important), that he was adopted, and that we are eager for him to be a sibling.  We didn't want to make it sound like we don't need another kid because this one is so amazing and perfect.  But our social worker reviewed it for us and said we did well, so that was exciting.  Matt pretty much knocked this out in a few days, proving, again, that his photoshop skills much exceed mine.

On Friday Luke and I dropped off a packet of profiles to both our agencies.

These really did print better than this picture shows.

It's official.  We are on the lists again and could be presented at any time.  We could become parents at any time.  I forgot what this felt like.  It's scary and exciting.  We honestly don't have any expectations that we'll get a baby soon or even as quick as we got Luke (10 months).  We've been told multiple times that many birth mothers want their kid to be the oldest and are more likely to place with a childless couple.  I have full faith in God that there is someone out there who will be looking for a big brother and will pick us.  Luke has made it a lot easier to wait and given me a lot more peace about the whole process.

While Luke and I were driving downtown to the agencies I prayed the whole time for all the women who would see our profiles.  It's a crazy and amazing thing to think about.  I don't think anyone purposely gets pregnant with the intention of giving a child up; I would guess most birth families are turning to adoption under less than ideal circumstances.  Looking at our profile will probably come during a very tough and emotional period.  It's hard to think about.  What is amazing for us is heartbreaking for another.

I've long been praying for our next child.  We started praying for Luke months before he was even conceived.  How crazy is that?  I remember driving home from work one day, early in the process, thinking that we were praying for this child before his birth mother probably was since she might not even know she was pregnant and giving a child up (and at that time, it turns out Luke was still months from being conceived).  It's makes me very emotional just thinking about it.

Early next year will make three years since we started our adoption journey.  It's not something we at all thought would be a part of our lives when we got married, when we talked about having kids.  Now I couldn't imagine a more perfect baby for us than Luke.  Now we just pray and wait and pray and wait, see what God has next for us.

If you have a moment today, please offer up a prayer for all the women considering adoption, in particularly ones that could be considering us.  Much much appreciated. =)