For some reason, inviting someone into your home to have them evaluate your personality, relationships, parenting style and cleanliness is a bit intimidating.

To be fair, our home study agent is VERY nice and has not made us feel incompetent in any way.  She has even given us some very helpful encouragement and coaching.  Yet, I am still uncomfortable when it comes time for the personal questions.

It’s strange.

I know that I love my wife and have great family and friends.  We both have stable jobs and are healthy…but it just makes me uncomfortable in my own skin to be evaluated in this way.  I worry that we will say something that will keep this agency or Ethiopia from allowing us to bring our little one home someday.  I worry that I won’t be an awesome dad.  I worry without reason.

Maybe this is a little too personal for a blog post for the entire world to see, but it’s true.  And in the same breath I know something else is true:

Matthew 6:25-30 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

 

We believe that God has called us to this adoption and that he will address each of our needs with the love of a perfect Father.  Teaching us when we loose focus and guiding us as we take each step.

 

After many weeks of transition from new home to new job(s) we were finally able to buckle down and find an adoption agency in which we have full confidence.  Children’s Hope International is an organization based out of Missouri.  They came highly recommended by others adopting from Ethiopia….

….wait….you didn’t know?  Yes, we are adopting from Ethiopia! 

Whenever Cassie and I talked about adoption our hearts and conversations ALWAYS shifted to this African country.  Honestly, its too hard to explain here and in some ways we may never be able to fully understand why.

So CHI is a fantastic bunch of folks who have a passion for seeing orphaned children placed in loving “forever-families”.  We were accepted into the program last week, and shortly after found a thick envelope full of paperwork in the mailbox.  Today we carved out several hours at the kitchen table to sign our names on various forms over and over again.  Right now we are trying to decide on a “home study” agency.  The home study process involves several meetings with a social worker and… you guessed it!… more paperwork!  Trust us when we say, “bring it on”.  There is no pile of forms or unforeseen obstacle that is too big for God to get us through and bring our little one home.