Homestudy

 Invite someone who is relatively a stranger into my home.  Check.

Answer questions about myself, our marriage, parenting, etc. for a several hours.  Check.

Hope and pray that I'm saying everything right even though there is only one way to say the truth.  Check.

Say goodbye to said stranger who in one day has become a great friend and support.  Check.

Rejoice that our homestudy is D.O.N.E. done and we are one step closer to our sweet Easton.  Checkity Check Check!

As you can tell, we had our homestudy yesterday and it went so amazingly great!  Our social worker, A(just using her initial), is absolutely fabulous, which we already knew before yesterday, so we really weren't worried about the homestudy . . . just excited to do it and keep moving forward in the process!  We allowed two days to get it done because it involves a lot of talking for us and a lot of listening/writing/processing for A.


But today wasn't needed . . . we rocked it out yesterday and still had time to hang out with A and get to know her better.  Wonder how she likes it when the tables are turned?!

Chad loves to get to know people, but I'm not gonna lie, sometimes I'm afraid they feel like they are getting interrogated!  He doesn't just ask surfacey things like where you grew up and went to school, but throws out questions like,  "What have you been learning in your time with God?" and "How are you growing within your church?" and "How is your relationship going with your boyfriend?"  Seriously?!  But if people don't run out the door, we sure get to know their heart and what is really going on in life so I'm thankful for my bold, pastor at heart, truly loves people husband!

Anyway . . . it really was a fun day.  A asked about how we met and fell in love.  We really have a great story that unfortunately I don't think about often enough.  It was good for my heart to recount how God brought us together in a way that only He could get the credit!  We also had to describe the ups and downs of our life together . . . our challenging first year of marriage at Doulos, moving to New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, losing Ashton (our first baby), Chad becoming pastor at Edgewater, our miracle baby Ava being born with a perfect heart while we were evacuated from Gustav (that few weeks had enough drama for a lifetime!), little man Grayson coming along, and God's call to adopt.  Whew . . . we have had a full 8.5 years of marriage!

It was truly a blessing to look back and verbalize all God has done in us and through us over the years.  How His grace has sustained us in the hard times and how His love has drawn our hearts to seek Him in deeper ways.  We're so blessed!

So what's next?  You guessed it . . . more paperwork!  We've done our part for the homestudy so now we just wait for A to get it completed sometime in the next few months.  In the meantime, I can start focusing on the documents we need for our dossier (the file on us that goes to Ethiopia).  I'm again trying not to be overwhelmed, but just focus on getting one little part done at a time.

You can be praying that our FBI clearances will come back really soon.  As well as praying that we have no hiccups in this next phase of paperwork.

It feels really weird to be hurrying knowing that at the end of the hurrying will be months years of waiting.  I'm going to need to go to a whole new level of patience and trust with Jesus during that time, but I'm more than certain He will take me there and He will be enough!