day 12: home study.

If you’re new here, welcome to our blog and to 31 Days of Purposeful Simplicity! You can click on the graphic in our sidebar for the full list of posts in this series.

I use Sundays this month for family updates.

And so now, the home study.

We finished our home study this past week. Due to short-staffing issues in our adoption agency office, we waited three months for our home study, but once we got started, we rolled! We squeezed all four appointments into just over a week.

The home study process consists of an initial home visit, individual interviews with David and me at the office, then a final home visit. The home study isn’t officially complete until our case worker writes it up and signs our official approval letter, which will hopefully happen soon.

Here’s where we are in the adoption process:

Preliminary application
Informational meeting
Formal application
Adoption training
Home Study
Letter of Approval
Make a family profile and photo book
Raise funds for adoption
Wait to be chosen by an expectant parent

It’s been a great process, and I can’t speak highly enough of our agency, Bethany Christian Services. But it’s also stressful, as you would expect. There’s lots of work to do, yes, but mostly for me the stress has come from feeling vulnerable. It’s come from putting my personal life and heart out there and trusting that it will lead to our child.

I think feelings of insecurity rise up in ways they don’t when you’re pregnant, feelings of, Will anybody want us? I’m trying, day by day, to take those feelings to God, and as my cousin Evie reminded me, to let Him write our story.

In the meantime, we’re grateful to those who have given toward our adoption. We’re planning a fundraiser for November, and more about that soon. But last night, some friends in Greenville hosted a Noonday jewelry trunk show to help raise money for our adoption.

If you haven’t heard of Noonday, you should check out their website. They’re a fantastic company that works with artisans in developing countries to provide employment. And their stuff is absolutely gorgeous. They also give a percentage of proceeds from their adoption trunk shows to families who are adopting.

My friend from church Kelly took the road trip with me last night and we had a wonderful evening meeting new friends and trying on jewelry and accessories. Thanks so much, Betsy and Leslie!

And so very soon we will officially be a Waiting Family and we have absolutely.no.idea when God will bring us baby Gentino. This is the great adventure, friends. We’d love your prayers in the waiting.

The four of us are unbelievably excited to meet our baby.