Just Another Tuesday

Well, have I got a story to tell you!  We had quite a Tuesday...

Yesterday morning we knew that the selection staffing for a sibling group we'd been short listed on was scheduled to happen.  After it was over our agency case worker called us to tell us we had not been selected.  Of course we were pretty down about that.

It had come down to four families including ours, and we were all on a fairly even playing field.  The factor that eliminated us was that we have only been married for a couple years and we are by their definition still "newly weds."  This is not the first time we've been eliminated as a potential adoptive placement based on the fact that we haven't been married "long enough."

We had already talked about opening back up to promising emergency foster placements and legal risk adoptive placements if this particular set of siblings didn't work out, but the reoccurring reason for not being selected sealed it for us.  It was going to likely be years before we would be selected for a straight adoptive placement just because we needed to be married a little longer.  If we were going to continue pursuing adoption through the foster care system, we had to take a little more risk and put our hearts on the line.

We communicated this desire to our agency case worker and within less than two hours we had received calls for two cases, an infant emergency placement that needed to be placed last night and a sibling group of two that needed to be placed by Monday of next week.  We said to put our name in the hat on both cases.

Within four hours we were picking up a sweet baby to take home and we've been loving on him all day.  Such a cutie!!  It kills me that I can't share pictures, but there's a very good reason for that.

We left our name in the hat for the sibling group as well (we're crazy and got licensed for up to 3 kids at a time) but it's very unlikely that they will select us since we just got an infant with some minor medical needs.  Our current thinking is that if we end up still being the best choice for them, then its God's will and he'll give us the strength, patience and endurance to do it.

I thing that I don't really understand is how putting a "newly wed" couple in a situation where they have 4 hours notice before getting a little baby and/or a pair of toddler to school age children would put less stress on their marriage than giving them all of the information on a set of kids, maybe a couple pre-adoption placement visits, with a set time line and the certainty of an adoptive placement...  Maybe this is a test?