Musings on homes...

Your home study is a key part of adoption. A social worker comes(after you pay thousands of dollars) to your house numerous times, interviews the family, separately and together, inspects your home, and basically is the deciding factor on if you get to adopt, how many, and what ages. It's kinda a really big deal.

Some of you know that we have been looking to build a house to house our larger family. Currently we are in a 2 bedroom closet(whoops, I mean condo) with no basement or garage. It's a tight squeeze to say the least! The simple fact is, there is a good chance that we would not pass the home study for having more children in our home, and even if we passed for one, the door would most likely close for the option on adopting more than one. (We like keeping that option open!)

So we were going to build, which would put us moving in around 8 months or so from now, in plenty of time to be settled before the new addition(s) to the family.

Or so we thought.

We had our "prescreening" interview with the agency 2 days ago, and beside this minor glitch, it went great! But the glitch is this, YOU CAN'T MOVE DURING THE ADOPTION PROCESS. Ouch.

What is a family who feels like "now" is the time to adopt supposed to do?

We are changing our housing plans. This might seem kinda crazy/ stupid to some, but not to us. You see the house we were going to build was a means to an end, the end being the ability to adopt. We didn't feel particularly "called" to the area, or to the house. It wasn't a God thing, it was a way to walk forward in the God thing we are following. So instead of waiting, saving more, and renting our current place out, we are selling, saving the profit(we got an AMAZING deal on our current place), and buying an older, cheaper house.

We are really thrilled with this "new plan", and feel more peace about it overall. We are looking at the community surrounding our old church that we absolutely LOVE(Westerville and Vineyard Columbus if you are local). It is in a diverse area, with both African Americans, and Africans in large supply. We have recently found out that the church has a decent sized community of families who have adopted from Ethiopia! Visions of multi cultural play dates dance in my head.

So if you are praying for us, please please pray for our housing situation! We need to get ours ready, sell, find a great house(with hopefully 4 bedrooms so we can keep a dedicated guest room for visitors, a basement or "extra" space for a playroom and storage, kitchen with counter space, and hopefully a wood burning fireplace or two to cut down on heating costs), and get it for a GREAT price(under 150,000). We cannot move past our YWAM Application without being into our new house, so we are hoping to have all of this done by the beginning of 2011(January- February, March at the latest).

Prayers against opposition would be great too, already in our short journey we feel significantly more attacked, maybe even more so now, because we are not "committed" yet in the form of thousands of dollars. This would be the easiest time for us to "quit" and the enemy knows it!

God is already showing he is faithful as well. A few times after tough days, I have prayed that I need a little boost, a little hope that we aren't in this alone, and sure enough those next days are the days someone tells us that they are praying for us and excited for what we are doing, or they have formula for us, or orders come in from strangers for our Etsy shop. Just small little reminders, that may not seem huge to the people doing them, or to anyone looking in, but that are HUGE to me! (If you are praying for an adoptive family us or otherwise, TELL THEM, and often too! This is not a journey for the weak hearted, and it is LONLEY more than not. Most of the world(Christians included) think you are absolutley insane and asks quetions that they would NEVER ask if you were pregnant with your biological child. So if you support us or another family, tell them, it is MORE IMPORTANT than financial support!)

Side note, I'm getting ready to do some maternity shirts, 23 a piece. They will be on comfy Old Navy long sleeve maternity "perfect" tee's. If you are interested please leave me a comment/ email with the size/ color(white, black, coral, pink, light teal).

With Love,
The Garretts