The Referral Process and moving forward
It's been a long time since I have written one of these. Well we have finally been approved and we are now in “unknown” territory as we have never been this far in our 2 year adoption journey.
Unknown can be scary as it's unfamiliar and it also can be exciting as it is a new adventure. The last several days I personally have dealt with both of these as it can be scary and exciting. I’m more of an analytical mind as this is more of a thought out approach. This can be a good thing, but it also can be a hinderance as I think about the negative aspects of each decision as well. With this being said we finally got to see the Special Home Finding List of each child available for international adoption in the Special Needs program for the Philippines. This can and should be exciting, but at the same time I start thinking which child/children should we ask about (we can only ask about one at at time and make a decision before going forward with another profile).
Seeing this list and all of the children I start thinking about my “future” family and what that would like. Ideally if you stop and ask yourself -“What is my ideal family, and what would I like it to look like?” -you might start with how many kids you want to have and where you want to live. Unfortunately or fortunately we cannot have kids of our own, so looking at this list, we are approved for up to 3 children that are ages 8 and younger. We then start to look at the list and try to decide which child/ children we should ask about. Talk about an unknown and we don’t know how many other families in the country have asked about them.
Once we make the decision on who we would like to be matched with, it can take up to 3 months to get an updated profile of the child with the possibility of being denied if they have already been matched with another family. We are not certain about this whole process and how it works entirely but we have slowly been grasping about how it works. It is also my understanding it can be another 15 months for the referral process (matching) to travel. Once we have our family home we will have another 6 months before they are “officially’ adopted and become US citizens.
The list is full of children with a variety of medical needs and we are asking for prayer for discernment over which child/children we should ask about. We have a stack of profiles of children printed out and we are praying over which to ask about. There is at this moment only one sibling group that fits our profile. As we shuffle through the next several months in what direction we should go, its scary and exciting because we are getting closer to having a family of our own.
We are 50% funded as well and are seeking out several grants for more funding so we are asking for prayer on where the next set of funds are coming from.
But the biggest priority for me right now is that I want to have a family of my own to love.
Caleb E. Elsea
One comment: you might consider having one baby then adding to your family in stages. Instant Family would be a heavy emotional and physical task. I support whatever avenue opens for you both. And I appreciate your candor in how you feel about weighing choices. Continued prayer from this side of Bluffton!