Using my own words against me

So Hubby and I had basically stalled out in our adoption journey. We had decided in October of 2006 that we were going to look into adoption from China. It was Hubby, John's idea. He brought it up one late night on the way back from his parents after his birthday party. We were driving and he just came right out and said, "I think I want to adopt." It was a bit of a surprise to me to be sure, I had never really entertained the idea much. He said he had heard a story of one of his boyhood heroes, George Brett, and how he and his wife adopted. He said the story just kept playing in his head and he just had to look into it a little more. I didn't really know what to think of it all. People had asked us what we thought about it when we had been married quite a few years and have never had a child of our own. I never really knew what to say. My pat answer was, "Well, I just don't think we could deal with it if the birth Mother backed out on us." It was just easier to say some kind of pat answer like that then to deal with it. But on this night, I was faced with it. Sitting alone in the car, just the two of us in the dark with an occasional street light illuminating his face I was faced with it. I didn't know what to say at first. He said he had been looking into it a little. He didn't like the thought of someone getting a ton of money from us, like lawyers or facilitators. He had found a "not for profit" agency that dealt in Chinese adoptions. They had a pay as you go program that interested him. He said he wanted to look into it a little more. I agreed it would be fine to look into it. I was a little hesitant at first, just because I wasn't necessarily ready to admit failure in our own attempts to have a child. See, the Doctors have never really stated that we would be unable to have a child of our own. I have some medical problems that might cause it to be a little "trickier", as my Dr. said. But at that time we had been married for 11 years and had been trying for 10 of those 11 years. I guess, not trying, per se, just letting God's Will prevail in our lives. Well, it apparently wasn't His Will for us to have a baby of our own in those 10 years. So here we were, discussing adoptions. Later that week, John showed me the website of the agency that he had found, Americans Adopting Orphans. It looked like a good agency. We sent off for some information and it came quickly in the mail. We looked it over and decided that we would go ahead and apply. We filled out the paperwork, filled out our first check and sent it off in the mail. The second packet was the homestudy guide. I was instantly overwhelmed! There was A LOT of documents that we needed. I started sending off for the ones that would take awhile. I got intimidated by the official documents that needed to be sent off to our government agencies for approval. All this paperwork had to be in at a certain time, and everything had to fall into place. The process had obviously worked for millions of family. It couldn't be THAT difficult. But it was intimidating...this paper had to be at this time, and this one had to be done before the homestudy, another one had to be completed before the homestudy could be completed....some nights I went to bed crying. 'It just shouldn't be this hard'..I kept telling myself. Being overwhelmed was an under-statement! We soon got discouraged with the process and just let it slide. Time slipped thru very quickly. Then about a year later, we decided to pick it up again. We looked through all the paperwork. Most of what we had already collected wasn't time sensitive and wouldn't need to be updated. We started again. Then the wait time for China went from a little under 2 years to 4! By this time, I was 35 and I kept saying, "I do NOT want to be 40 years old starting to raise a child!" The wait times got longer and longer. We got the name of a good Social worker for our homestudy, talked to her one time and didn't call again.

Skip ahead to January 2010. I was playing on Facebook one day when John's cousin, Julie sent me a message. She was asking about how the adoption stuff was going. I gave her a pretty lame answer. I told her that we had stalled out and we just weren't doing anything about it right now. She asked what she could do to help. I gave her a few more lame excuses and she said, "Well, you'll never regret doing it. No excuses, just do it!" Later that month, I was in the Toddler room at Church (I'm the Nursery Director at our Church, but also do the scheduling and due to some unforseen circumstances I became the Toddler Sunday School teacher) and the lady that came in to take over for AM Churchtime said, "So how is the adoption stuff going?" I just looked at her. I kept getting these questions and I didn't know how to tell people that we had stalled out again. That we really wanted a child, but were easily discouraged. I mean, if you want something bad enough it should take a lot more to discourage us, right? I just simply said, "We're kind of stalled out on it now. I just worry about the money. It costs a lot and although we both have pretty good jobs, I just worry about it." She looked at me and said, "Well, it's a shame because you and John would be wonderful parents. If you wait to have enough money, you'll probably never do it...that will just be a shame!" I sat there for a minute.....How many times have I heard and said the very same thing. I can't even count how many times! It was true...when I really thought about it....it was true. Obviously, we are not getting any younger. Other families have kids whether they meant to, or not, and they get by. Things are tight for awhile, but they always are when you have young kids at home. I've heard countless people say that they wouldn't give up those times and memories for anything. I emailed that lady later that afternoon and told her thank you for the little nudge. I talked to John on the way home that day. "No matter what we choose to do, either private, agency, whatever...we still need to have our homestudy done." China is so far out, maybe we should just look into the agency that AAO joined up with here in Overland Park. What do you think? We can get our homestudy done and then look into our options?" John was all for it. "It's our 'Number 1 priority' we just need to get this thing done!" He said that this thing really bothers him about not getting to be a parent and wanting it so bad. So I spent the rest of the afternoon at the computer researching for homestudys and agencies. The agency that AAO had joined up with was called American Adoptions. They also run 1 800 Homestudy. I sent a few emails looking for some information. We received the info in the mail the following Tuesday. Looking over it, this seemed 'do-able'. We both sighed. It would be a little work, but there was a lot less paperwork then the International adoption plan.
Continued......