Wait and Hope

Bryon and I met with LDS Family Services (it was called LDS Social Services at the time) to see what the process would be in adopting. There were mounds and mounds of paperwork to be completed. Once again, I felt like our life was an open book to be scrutinized by others. It was also required that we take a six-week adoption class that was offered one night a week. The Logan agency (which is where we were going through) met with the Ogden agency in Ogden. Once a week, Bryon and I drove to Odgen to attend the classes. We loved our weekly class. We drove over to Ogden and tried to eat somewhere fun before going to class. We learned so much from these adoption classes. We learned about the adoption process but more importantly we met with other couples who were also going through this process. We learned we were not the only ones! We completed the paperwork in Logan just before we moved to Idaho for Bryon to take a teaching job.

Moving delayed the process a little. We had to redo some of the paperwork and then we had to meet with the social worker here a couple of times. We soon grew very frustrated. Let’s just say the social worker was anything but warm and fuzzy. We had just purchased a new house. When the social worker came to look at our house, he was very vocal about how our house was not “family friendly.” Our house was split level. The master suite was on the top floor and then the other two bedrooms were two flights of stairs below us. I wanted to cry. (Actually, I think I did). We had just bought this $80,000+ home and our social worker was telling us it wouldn’t work. It wasn’t like we could take it back to the store and get a refund! We had also put that we were willing to accept a child of any race. Our social worker strongly suggested that we should only adopt a white-race infant for our first child. He told us that adoption was hard enough for these children to face let alone throwing in the race card. This is such a vulnerable time in the process. We changed the paperwork to match the social worker’s request. It wasn’t long before it was very evident to both Bryon and I putting down we would only accept a white child was not what we were supposed to do. We called the worker and after much talking, begging, and pleading, we were able to change the paperwork back.

Then the wait began. We waited and waited and waited. We would get calls wondering if we would accept a certain situation and then would never hear back or would hear back that she had chosen another family.

I always thought I would have to be a working mom. We decided to take a huge leap of faith and I soon left my job working at a local bank and decided to start watching a few children in my home. This was a blessing. I was able to work from home, I would be able to be at home with our children when they came, and still bring in some income to help make ends meet. However, this was very painful at first. Watching other’s children was a constant reminder for me, that I couldn’t have what I wanted most. . . a child of my own. I had also worked outside the home for the first three years of our marriage. I loved the social aspect. All of a sudden I was home alone watching children that fell short of meeting my social needs.

It would be another long and painful eight months before we would welcome our first child into our home.