We attended our first Homestudy class last evening. It was postponed last week due to snow, so we were anxious to get our classes underway. We were asked what is our greatest expectation and what is our greatest fear regarding adoption. Our greatest expectation is just being able to finally be parents. Our greatest fear falls into the main "what if" of adoption~what if the birthmother changes her mind. Although we do know that God has a plan for our family, and he has a child for us. Our faith helps us to know that if a potential birthmother decides that keeping her child is the best for her situation, we need to support her and continue to pray for her and the baby. If that were to happen, we would know that this baby was not the child that God has in store for us. So, our greatest "fear" would become a way to minister to the mother and family that we are all in this journey together, fears and all. When you chose to live by faith, your worst fears don't seem so bad after all.

We will continue through 8 weeks of Homestudy courses and completing our required paperwork/evaluations. This will be a very busy time for us, but once we have this two months behind us, the waiting begins. Our agency encourages us to start preparing for the wait time~read, read, read; talk with parents who have adopted; plan a vacation; plan fundraisers; complete projects; etc. Having a plan for the wait time will give us a feeling of still being proactive in the process. We have decided that we really don't want to prepare our nursery until we know for sure that we are bringing home our baby, but it sure is fun to be able to start looking at furniture, bedding, and tiny little outfits and be excited and full of hope~finally!