A big sigh and little hiccup

We finally finished our paperwork for the homestudy! Everything has been submitted, so now the next step is to begin the interview process! Life tried to get in the way, but we kept working a bit, and working a bit more until we finally got it all done. It's such a huge relief to have it off our plate! We still have more paperwork to complete for our agency, but about half of it is already done, and the part I like LEAST is really already mostly done from the homestudy. And then we have the profile books to finish (more on that later in the post).

The hiccup is the fingerprints.

Oh, yes. I had a sneaky suspicion that this would be our first setback. Since there's no fingerprint equivalent to HIPAA, which gives permission to share information between health care providers, fingerprints done for one agency remain ONLY with that agency. Because I'm a teacher and work with kids all day every day, I think I've been fingerprinted a total of six times over the course of my career. Bill's prints were rejected because his perpetually dry hands were - well, dry - on the day of printing. Slather on the moisturizer, man!

And there was no explanation for why my prints were rejected, but I'm quite sure it's my deformed finger. When I was 20, I had WAY too much fun playing in the pool with a bunch of friends and ended up breaking one of my fingers right at the joint. There wasn't much to do for it except splint and ice it, so I did. But to this day it's just a little crooked and won't lie flat unless pressed down. This second round of printing, I reassured the social worker that no, it doesn't hurt to press it down, and are you sure you got ink on that finger? Sure enough, that crazy finger never even got inked. I'm glad she caught that BEFORE pressing it to paper.

In the end, though, it will come out in the wash. We only just turned in our paperwork this week and it will take a couple of months or more to finish the interviews and paperwork processing. And the fingerprints will take a couple of months, so we're really just calling it even.

So, the next step, you ask? Well, Bethany has a lot of stuff for us to fill out, too, but I already took care of a sizable amount the day of our orientation. The last thing we need to do is create a profile book for birthmothers to look at when they are deciding on adoptive families. It's a way to give them an impression of who we are and what we're about. It's probably the most creative part of the adoption paperwork, and I'm actually looking forward to that part. We are searching for pictures, though. If you haven't received an email from me yet and have pictures of us you'd like to share, just leave me a comment below and I'll get in touch with you.

So, I guess we're about 2/3 of the way done with paperwork stuff - yes! We'll keep plugging away until we get it all done! Thank you to everyone who has been praying for us - we truly appreciate it. I know there are a few friends of mine at church who've been warriors in prayer for us, and it is so humbling to know there are so many holding us up to the Lord about this adoption. I know He has everything under control and has planned our adoption down to the very smallest detail. Everything happens for a reason and in its due time. We will continue to walk in faith and obedience as we let the Lord work it all out for us!