Home study!

Hope everyone had a good thanksgiving. It was the only day Nick and I had off together out of the last 8 days. We spent the day with my family for a little bit in Kaufman and then with his family in Van and ate way to much. We have the day off today so let the Christmas transformation begin 🙂

A quick update. From what we were told, we have completed all of our paperwork! YAY! And we were told we can move forward and schedule our home study! We are hoping to hear something this week about getting it scheduled. If we can get it done before Christmas that would be wonderful. Once we do the home study they have to type it up and meet with a panel. I don’t think we will be approved to adopt before the new year but we are thankful we know what is next. Helps me be a little more patient and understanding since it is the holiday season.

A new little development. There is something called legal risk placements. Legal risk means we would take in a child whose parental rights have been terminated but maybe parents are appealing OR rights have not been terminated but are more than likely going to be terminated. So we may get a child but with the understanding that child may be reunited with parents or family.

Nick and I talked a little bit about legal risk after are weekend training in October but hadn’t really talked more about it until recently. Our case worker emailed us about some other things and she was wondering if we had talked about it anymore because they had a newborn baby boy recently needing placement that was legal risk and she had thought of us. Of course she had to say that right?! I told nick about the email and what she said at the end and that was that.

But something inside of me just had me thinking about the possibility of doing legal risk. Lots of questions that come up with that.  Of course our plan the whole time has been adoption and now here I am considering legal risk placement. We are wanting to grow our family and if we do legal risk that might come with a lot of heartbreak. It could also come with a lot of joy. Odds are in are favor but not guaranteed. It is really scary to think about but is it something we are willing to risk? A thousand thoughts going through my head.

So I pray about it. Always seems like a good thing to do. I’ve felt like I would be the one open to legal risk more than Nick so at the end of prayer I said “Alright God if this is something Nick and I should consider doing then I want Nick to bring it up.” (that was a good idea right, I think deep down I was hoping Nick wouldn’t bring it up)

About 24hrs later Nick and I are having dinner before we got to work and He says ” I’ve been thinking.” I immediately knew what he was about to say. “I think we should consider doing legal risk.” I just sat there a let him talk. He gets done and I say ” I have to tell you something but I don’t want to cry.” He is like just tell me. I tell him “I prayed yesterday that if legal risk was something we should consider doing that you would bring it up.” He looked at me and kind of laughed and said something about God’s sense of humor. So we have briefly discussed it here and there and are praying about it. Hopefully we can talk more this week since our schedules we be somewhat back to normal.

So I don’t know what God has in store for us or what decision we will make. We might still pursue adoption and later do legal risk if things aren’t working out. We might go ahead a go forward with legal risk. Who knows.

1. Pray for Nick and I to have good conversations about which direction we want to go even if it means the Lord is calling us out of our comfort zone.
2. Pray our home study gets done as soon as possible and goes well.
3. Keep praying for our future child!

Brittany and Nick