Quiet Days

Things have been pretty quiet around here for the past few weeks. This is a change from the previous weeks, where we seemed to have one birth-mother situation after the other presented to us. I've not minded so much having a break from the emotional gymnastics. It was a challenge to get my mind around each new adoption potentiality every couple of weeks with different due dates, genders, races, birth parent circumstances, and fees. Ed, less affected by the details, has more stamina for this sort of thing than me. But neither one of us is all that steady when it seems like nothing is happening at all. We recently started wondering aloud to one another about never being chosen to be parents. At what point does a couple decide to throw in the towel?

This week I made contact with Sharon, a friend of the family who works for an adoption agency in my home town. Her seasoned perspective helped to dispel the gloom that was beginning to descend around our ears. She told us that we are right in line with the average time line of couples waiting for a referral (you have a "referral" when a birth mother has chosen you and you have agreed to adopt her child). She told us the average wait, from the time that you submit your profile letter to the time of referral, is 12 months. (Profile letters are written by adoptive parents to birth mothers in order to introduce themselves with photos and information about who they are and how they plan to raise their adopted child/children).

(O.K. So our agency did tell us that the average wait is anywhere from 6 to 18 months. Same thing, I suppose. But when we passed the 6 month mark back in October, I started feeling like it should be any day now. And though our profile was only submitted in April 2010, it is hard to convince ones' self that all the time of wading through paperwork previous to that date does not count as waiting. Nor does anything before that. It probably didn't help that our home study expired in November and we had more than a month of slogging through fresh - and yet familiar - paperwork before we were rolling again).

In our conversation, Sharon filled me in a bit on birth mothers' process of choosing adoptive parents. She reminded me of the sacrifice that birth mothers make for the sake of their child when they choose adoption. (This is always a helpful reminder for me, as I get caught up in my own perspective). Birth mothers look for someone like themselves. Someone they can identify with, who will raise the child like the birth mom would if she could. Sharon mentioned that if a birth mother chooses adoptive parents for her child and later brings a boyfriend or family members in to look at profiles without telling them who she has chosen, they will all always choose the same adoptive parents as she did.

Our friend's wisdom and kind words - that some day, we will be the right match for someone who is looking for us - provided just the needed ray of sunshine for our graying outlook. Thanks be to God.