It never ceases to amaze me how many people in a day will ask the exact same question..."How much longer till you have a child home?"...and I always have the same answer..."We are waiting for a referral and it could be 3 years." Oh how I HATE saying that. 3 years seems like an eternity, but if we're realistic we have to be prepared to wait that long. Dustin and I have weighed the options of extending our parameters already. Maybe we should take 2, but can we afford it, maybe we should go up in years, but they'll be practically grown by the time they get here. Then I will hear this still small voice in my head say, "Lindsey, just be patient, you're child is already picked out for you, and it's just going to take some time to get her here."
So I knew I wasn't good at waiting, I could possibly be the most impatient person ever. If I had it to do over again we would have selected a child before starting and then proceeded to adopt them instead of doing all the work then waiting. Ya know I'm finding out we are more and more open to a special needs child than we ever thought. I think when we first started this process, the words Special Needs terrified dustin and I. We just can't take care of a child with special needs and were'nt really sure that we even wanted to. In our own ignorance,what we pictured as debilitating us is actually life enhancing. I follow blogs of many moms and dads that have decided to adopt children with the label "special needs" and quite honestly I've learned they should just drop the word "need" from it all together. They are just flat out SPECIAL!! What a blessing these children are.
We open the MOJ file monthly looking for the child that could be ours and what used to be a scary medical has suddenly turned into "we can definitely handle that". Most of these children are simply overlooked because of this label and a majority of them, with the proper care, live a perfectly healthy lifestyle. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to downplay the incredible determination and love it takes to raise a child with special needs. But I am saying that a majority of the families who have opened their hearts and homes to a special need gets blessed more and more each day by the smiling faces of these incredible children and quite frankly can't picture their lives and differently.
Whatever child God has for us, we are excited about, and expect them to be a blessing every day. It makes me overjoyed to be able to think, somewhere in Bulgaria there is a small child wondering where their mommy and daddy are and even though they may not know it yet, we are sitting right here just waiting for the words "come get your child".
My special needs child is more of a shining star! You are right though, at first what we think we can't handle isn't always what we will end up getting. Trust in God when you see your shining star you will know it and fight for them like no other.
ReplyDeleteHi , I check in on your blog to see how your adoption is going. We have just been approved by the MOJ and are also waiting on a referral. You mention in your most recent post that you check the MOJ waiting child list, how does one do that we didn;t know that was possible. could you send me the link or information?
ReplyDeletee-mail mag7lamont@yahoo.com
I also have a blog thecountlessconklins.blogspot.com
Just wanted to jump in here and give you the suggestion that if you are serious you are open to more special needs, then it might help with your referral if you go ahead and modify your homestudy and send in a new notarized special needs list to the MOJ. When we had been on the list about eight months (for a boy or girl 0-2 since our youngest bio was 3,) we decided there were a few more things we were open to than we originally had been. I shared this thought with our case manager, and she suggested we get that info to the MOJ just to keep them updated. I'm not kidding when I say that about three weeks after our new list was sent to the MOJ, we had our referral. We were only on the list ten months, which felt like forever, but as you know is nothing. We were referred a little boy who was 17 months old at the time and was missing his forearms. We've been home about six weeks with him, and it doesn't even feel like a special need! Ironically, his needs were on our original list (we were open to a lot,) and I'm convinced that when they got that list separate from the mound of paperwork that is a dossier, they had a chance to realize just how open we were to different needs and went ahead and matched us. Obviously, I can't promise that yours would be that quick, but it can only speed things up to add more needs. Just thought I'd share in the hopes that it's helpful! Good luck!
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