Taking the Next Steps

Wow, it's been way too long since I last blogged.  I've had several things I'd wanted to write about, but never got around to it.  But today since we have positive news on our journey, I wanted to be sure to write about it.  Things are coming right along on our foster/adopt process.  We've finished our classes except for one we have to make up in a couple of weeks.  We've turned in almost all of our paperwork, including getting our CPR & first aid completed.  The state decided yesterday we don't have to have a fire inspection anymore, so check that off the list.  Shannon and I will both go get our fingerprinting/FBI background checks done tomorrow.  But the best news of all is that we have finally gotten far enough in the process to have been assigned to a case manager and she actually called us today!!  This is the person who will be responsible for our homestudy, which is really our last big hurdle logistically to getting licensed.  She is also the person who will advocate for us and help match us with the right kids for us.  It's all very exciting and so what I needed right now when things are so frustrating and unsure at work right now.  Both Shannon and I may be having major career transitions again in the very near future.  Very exciting, but very scary at the same time.  Just like the prospect of us having kids actually here in our house in the near future.  Looking back, I never would have imagined I'd be here, but am so thankful I've been led down this road!

Remembering

Today should have been the due date for pregnancy #3.  This was the blighted ovum, the only one of the babies I never got to see at all, the only one we never saw a heartbeat or anything.  It's definitely on my mind, but I don't feel so overwhelmingly sad as I have for other due dates in the past.  I feel like I've finally come to a sense of peace about these losses, like they were all part of our journey to get us to "our kids", whether our kids end up being foster or adopted or even biological one day.  Each pregnancy was special in its own way, but losing each one was a step on our path to where we're meant to be, to the children we were meant to have in our home all along.  It feels so good to write these words and to really mean it.  After so long and so much pain, it's so good to be feelin' good again.

Humor

In our foster-adopt class last night, we discussed dealing with children who have been sexually abused.  One part of it was us having to split up with men on one side of the room and women on the other.  We had to get together in our gender groups and come up with as many words for the genitalia of the opposite sex as we could list in five minutes.  It was supposed to get us used to hearing those kinds of words because our foster kids could very well come in using words like these.  Then she made someone from each group read the lists out loud to the class.  Shannon had volunteered to be the reader before he knew what the task was going to be.  It was so adorable to see him squirm up there.  That was so not like him.  He is usually so comfortable and confident in every situation, but someone about saying those kinds of words in front of a group of relative strangers really got to him.  It was nice to find a bit of humor in what can be such a serious class...

Exposed

I went to get a bikini wax today.  I was lying there half naked with my legs spread out, thinking how I could never do that job.  It's so intimate and takes such a certain person to put someone at ease in such a vulnerable position, even if you've never met before.  Then I started thinking about how that is so similar to my job as a counselor.  I figuratively ask people to sit there "naked" and open themselves up in such a vulnerable way.  I invite them to share their most intimate details of themselves with me from almost the beginning of our therapeutic relationship.  I strive to put them at ease even in their most exposed and helpless times.  I bet that esthetician thought to herself, man, I could never be a counselor...