Out of left field!

Justin and I have found out are completely unprepared for the decisions that lay ahead of us. We just sent our papers to Moscow a week ago today. We are fully prepared for it to take up to a year before receiving a referral AFTER we have been assigned a region. And again it could take up to four weeks to even be assigned a region. Essentially we should not be hearing anything about the adoption for a couple of weeks at least.

So I have been at a conference in Springfield since Wednesday. Yesterday, I go to my hotel room and check my voicemail. There is a message from Pam with Children’s Hope asking me to call her back as soon as I could. By the tone of her voice I braced myself for some frustrating news about our paperwork – something not signed in the right spot – something missing – some expired date. So I call her and she said… Heather, I called Justin and left him a message as well. I am glad you called back. This may come as a shock to you since you haven’t even been assigned a region yet, BUT we have two boys that we are looking to place. They are brothers. They are a bit older than you had said you are open to, but we wanted to see if you would consider. We don’t have a lot of couples open to sibling groups…. (I began to shake and my stomach started turning! Were our papers even in Moscow yet??? This is unheard of. No one prepared us that this could happen now.) The boys are from the Vladivostock region and their birthdays are July 2001 (7 yrs old) and September 2005 (3 yrs old). Their medicals are being sent but we don’t have them yet. We have a picture of each boy. Would you like me to send them to you? (Pictures?? Ummmmm I don’t know about that?!?!). Some people don’t like to see pictures until they have made a decision one way or another (Whew – great idea. Please don’t send the pictures yet). We understand if this is too much for you to consider right now and the boys are older than you had requested, but we’ll give you some time to digest the information. And one more thing before I let you go, if you and Justin decide to meet the boys you will travel to Russia in two weeks!

So after hanging up, I was in a state of shock. This isn’t how things were supposed to go. God, is this the path you want us to go down? Are these boys hard to place and they are trying to take advantage of Justin and my newness to the system? Is this a defining moment that we are going to miss? If we say no, we are telling two little boys that we don’t want to provide a home for them. This is gut wrenching!

Justin and I spoke on the phone for some time and after getting over the initial shock, we both decided to take some time to pray, think about the events, and see what each of us come up with. Unfortunately time is of the essence because if we say yes to meeting the boys we have to get everything in order. If we say no we need to do so quickly so they can approach another family. Again, I can’t explain how incredibly difficult and unexpected this whole situation is.

So what did we decide? After many text messages, phone calls, praying sessions etc… we have decided that we are going to have to say no. The driving force behind our reasoning is that the 7 year old boy is older than Madison. We are not comfortable with the impact this may have on Brady and Madison. They are prepared for one or two younger brother(s) or sister(s). They are not prepared to have another sibling older than them or in between them. Justin and I feel that we have to respect our current family structure while preparing ourselves for our new additions. We are upset about having to say no to these two little boys, but we do feel a peace with our decision. We would ask each person that reads this blog to lift up these two little boys from Vladivostock, Russia in their prayers. We pray that they find a permanent home soon in a nurturing environment.