Home Study Completed & Approved!

Where we are currently in the adoption process:

The Home Study

Once we clicked "submit" on the adoption registration page, we chose an agency to do our home study.  About 12 hours later, we switched that agency as they had a long to-do list of things that, according to the government, we didn't actually need to do.  Liban selected a different agency and the lady asked us to come to their children's home and meet her.  

That meeting was mainly small talk and her getting a good idea of who we are, then she asked us to fill out "Part 1" of the home study form.  Basically, that form is 20 ways of asking "Do you really want to adopt?" "Why do you want to adopt?" and "Does your family approve?"  So we filled it out. 

This past Friday, we picked her up and hit about 45 minutes of traffic on the way home.  She stood outside our front door and said that she liked the badminton court, walked in, and sat on our couch.  That is the extent that she  viewed our home.  Compare that to America, where they make sure your smoke alarms are working, and it's almost funny how not thorough it was.  For the next 2 hours, she told us what to delete from the answers we'd previously written as she was trying to make the 10 page document only 3 pages.  She also asked us in various ways at least 10 times how in the world I (an American living in India and obviously not knowing the culture) would be able to manage being both a housewife (gag!) and parenting one, much less two, special needs children.   At one point, I even tried to explain that we would be parenting differently, with TWO parents dealing with the kids (that doesn't really happen in India so much).  She literally waved her hand and dismissed that comment.  Liban knows Indian culture and what answers work best and just told her that his mom would be here to help out any time he wasn't around.  She nodded approvingly, as she could understand that answer.  

By the time we had dropped her off back at the children's home, I had a fever and was super grumpy/hangry and offended by everything she'd said--because I know I'll be a decent mom (although I will definitely feed my curry-eating children PB&J every once in awhile).  Liban on the other hand, knew better as "it's just her Indian way of thinking" and shrugged his shoulders. 

Home Study Approved!

Monday right after lunch, Liban texted me that he'd gotten an email saying our home study was approved and uploaded to the government website.  Considering the agents are given up to 30 days to submit the paperwork, this is amazing!  

What's Next?

Once I got home from school (and showered, because, lice and rat turds) we sat down together to scroll through the list of children with special needs available for adoption.  There are 400+ with physical special needs and 200+ with mental special needs.  From what I could tell, only a few overlapped on both lists.  Most information and pictures are outdated (i.e. you see a picture of a newborn, and then look at their file and it says they were born in 2010), so it's a little difficult to get a good idea of what you're even looking at.

I've heard from many other adoptive mamas that "you'll just know" which child is meant to be ours.  Well, so far there haven't been any lightning bolts. . . . and because we don't know which kids are part of sibling groups, it's more than a little confusing.  All that said, yes, there are a couple kids that stood out to me once I read their files.  No, we don't know if either of them is supposed to be ours. 

More than that standing out, I realized for the first time what people mean when they refer to "savior complex" in adoption.  I know that we will be taking a child out of an institution, and that's a good thing because loving families are the best environment for any child.  But I don't think I've ever had the perspective of "we are saving a child."  I think my two perspectives have been primarily: 

1) We want children, and there are children who need parents.  So the shoe fits.

2)  God says to take care of widows and orphans, and I don't believe He meant "only via financial sponsorships so they can remain in institutions without knowing the love of a family."

But, I think all that changed yesterday for a brief moment.   As we scrolled through child after child who NEEDS a home, a family, there were so many with intimidating diagnoses, intimidating paragraph-long LISTS of diagnoses for a single child.  There were medical files that stated "the neurologist's opinion is that this child is not fit for adoption."  There were personal history files stating that a child's parents were educated and had good jobs but were "uninterested" in pursuing the required surgeries.  [Insert tears, righteous anger, and determination to use my medical knowledge and therapy skills to give these children a chance at life and maximize the quality of their lives, AKA savior complex.]  

But the truth of it is, there are some needs that living in India isn't best suited for; there are diagnoses that I know we are not best suited for unless God specifically calls us and equips us for them.  There are teenagers, including "Honor," "Naomi," and "Jeanette" who I once fostered and still love dearly, but we know we shouldn't try to parent a teenager when we are both in our twenties.  

So, what now?  We pray, we discuss, we wait.  We could have put a child on reserve last night and be ready to travel to bring them home within a couple weeks.  But this is moving really fast, and we need lots and lots of wisdom on what to do next.  Please, please, please pray with us.