Why adopt?

Most people look at us a little funny when we explain to them that we are choosing to adopt before having children by birth. Adoption seems to be very scary to some people and we get lots of interesting questions such as "are you afraid you are not going to love them the same if you do have biological children?".  When I think of this question I think of how God adopted us into His home and loves us more than I can possibly understand. Although these children will enter our home in a different way, they will still be our children that God placed with us. We are beyond thrilled with the idea that we have this great opportunity to bring children in our family and give them an eternal home with Christ.

James 1:27

²⁷Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Not everyone is meant or called to adopt, but this verse above really shows that as Christians we are all called to care for orphans and widows. This could mean by adopting, working in orphanages or simply supporting others in your Church to adopt. I believe that verse above should be practiced in every Church, whether by sponsoring adoptions, having adoption bible studies, sending missionaries to other countries, or by praying for those that are adopting.

Kim

The Waiting Game...

Last week we had our last meeting with our adoption worker. We got to read our homestudy and sign off on it and had one last questionaire to complete. Our homestudy was super long, I had no idea there would be so much information written about us. So we are officially approved and are waiting for our match, which could be 1 child or 2 siblings. Our adoption worker told us that she has no idea how long it will take until kids that match us are available for adoption, they seem to be having a slow few months right now, so it could be in a week or it could be in a year.

Dave and I are finally at a point where we feel as ready as we could possibly be. Our marriage is stronger than ever and my work is finally slowing down. Although we feel ready, there is so much uncertainty that we still are pretty scared. We have no idea what sex, what age and history our children will have, so there is no way to prepare for all of that.

Waiting used to be something that drove me crazy, but God has been working in me and has given me a lot of patience. "Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the lord" Psalm 27:14. There have been many times in my life where God has shown me that he has great plans and that they are worth waiting for, seeing him work already in my life has made waiting this time so much easier. We have been told by a few social workers that it could take up to a few years to be matched, the first time they told me that I was crushed. I was so upset and told Dave what they had said to me and as soon as I finished telling Dave a sense of calm came over me. I could feel God saying "who do you trust?". The next thing I said to Dave was "It is not going to take that long for us". Over this past month we have felt God preparing us and I have had this overwhelming peace that the time will be soon. A really great song that has inspired me is called "While I'm Waiting" by John Waller. I know that His plans are so great that I will find joy in this time and will keep serving until the time comes.

Kim

We got a call two days ago that our homestudy has been officially written up and as soon as her supervisor signs off on it we can go in to see it. We are really excited to see what it says and hopefully have the opportunity to find out if they have many kids coming into crown wardship. We have actually only been in the process for about 5 months which is not long at all considering most people wait a year to two years to be placed with a child in Canada. But we feel ready and hope we can bring our child(ren) home soon.

We have two bedrooms painted and have bought a childs bedroom set with a single bed and dresser with mirror. We figure at least one of our children will be in a kids bed and we will wait to see if there is a younger one that requires a crib and will get that during the transition. We also have a TON of books and some toys, so pretty much everything else we need will depend on their ages and we will not have much time to buy all of that. Luckily we have wonderful parents that will help us with all of that. As soon as we get the call with a match they could be in our home within a week to 4-5 weeks which all depends on the age of the child. Older children take longer to transition. And although they will not be in our home for a few weeks, as soon as we make the decision to adopt them we will spend time with them everyday. This could mean spending time at the foster parents so we can see their routines, going on outings with them and having them over to our place. So during the transition we will be pretty busy with visiting the child(ren), buying everything we need, and I will be sorting things out at work.

I am planning on taking 9 months of parental leave, Dave may take some of it, but it completely depends on the development of our children. I have a background in teaching and plan on working with our kids. A lot of kids in care are below their level of development since they have either been neglected or faced abuse. These are the type of children that we feel called to be taking care of and we predict they will need work/love to get to their developmental milestone. Leaving work is a big source of stress for me. We have made so many changes over the past year and I have gone from having one staff member to being responsible for that position plus 20 student council members, 2 part time staff, and 6 placement students. Over the past few months I have been without a full time staff member since they College had a hiring freeze, but today I found out I am able to replace this position which is AMAZING! Knowing I have someone to cover things if I have to leave right away takes away a lot of stress. I know that being a parent goes above any job, but it makes it harder when you love your job and have an invested interest in the people you advise. I love my staff and students and know I will not be able to completely stay away for 9 months, especially during move in.

Well that is enough from me today. I have so much more to say...but that will have to come later.

:o) Kim

Welcome to our Blog!

Hello Family and Friends,

Welcome to our blog. We are going to use this space to blog our journey to parenthood. Most of you know Dave and I have decided to persue adoption through the Children's Aid Society. This was something that I have always felt we were meant to do with our life, but we always thought we would wait until we had biological children before going down this path. This past summer we decided it was time to start adding to the Dixon clan and were beginning to try the biological route. After a few months of no success we began to seek God for his for our family and adoption kept coming into our hearts. It was never our plan to do this first as we were always told adoption workers preferred people to have biological children before they adopt. After 3 months of trying to conceive we decided to go to an adoption information session at the Ottawa CAS and we decided to put in our application. We were told once the application is put in it could take up to a year before the homestudy is started. We decided that we could try both routes to parenthood for the time being and would just see what would come first. We put in our application in September and 3 weeks later we were approved to start the homestudy! It was amazing to see how quickly we were approved, especially after our adoption worker told us others that were approved at the same time as us had waited 9 months to a year.

In the past 3 months we have completed PRIDE and our homestudy. PRIDE is a mandatory course that all individuals wishing to adopt in Canada must complete. This consisted of 30 hours of in class training with other families either wishing to adopt or do foster care. This training is designed to show families the reality of what children in care have gone through so that we don't enter adoption with rose coloured glasses. We learn alot about loss and attachment in order to prepare families for the transition.

Our homestudy consisted of 4 meetings with our adoption worker and this took place over a few months. The first meeting was at the CAS office and the other 3 took place at our home. As a part of the homestudy we had to get medical and police checks as well as reference checks from family and friends. In the meetings we discussed our family history, how we were raised, our marriage and any issues in our lives that we may have had to overcome. During our last meeting our worker shared with us that she felt we were a really strong couple and that we would be best suited for children that have faced abuse/neglect, she also shared that she did not think our wait would be too long. Over the past 8 months at the Ottawa CAS they have placed 80 children into adoptive homes and in a typical year they place 60, so it is a busy year for them. We also confirmed with her after taking PRIDE and doing the homestudy that we still wanted 1 child or 2 siblings up to 5 years old.

So now we are playing the waiting game and trying our best to prepare to be parents. We realize that we may not have the first few years of a childs life to figure out how to raise them, so once they arrive we need to have a game plan. So Dave and I are reading a lot of books and putting our plan on paper....I will continue in the blog to share more about our journey to parenthood!