Coming into view?

Some of the details of today’s update will be a repeat of details included in some of the earliest blogs.  For those of you that are sucker enough to have read them all, just hang in there.

Rewind in Scott-land (not to be confused with actual Scotland) almost a year.  Any profession means a conference, seminar, or training from time to time, and one that comes up annually for me is the Athletic Director’s conference for our state every spring.  After 2-3 days of it, we finish up with a couple of sessions where little door prizes are drawn for.  The end of the conference means the drawing for the grand door prize – two tickets to two Boston Red Sox games, including airfare.  Against normal odds on my part, I was drawn to win the tickets.  We took off right after the drawing and headed back to West Tennessee in time to see JP’s t-ball game that night.  Due to some other circumstances with Gabe, we were trying to cheer him up anyway, so we immediately promised him that he could be the one to go with me on the trip.

As time neared to the game we were to attend in September, I got online to book the hotel.  While the airfare and tickets were the prize, the hotel, food, and anything else requiring money while we were there were on me.  Just looking at the hotels online, I quickly confirmed that Boston was not West Tennessee, or even Nashville or St. Louis for that matter.  It was more closely related to booking a hotel in New York City.  You pay for a safer neighborhood.  While it never came to conversation, I can remember thinking to myself how, with the adoption process underway, we really should save that money and pass the tickets on to someone else.  But, I knew we had promised the trip to Gabe, so that thought didn’t get far out of my head.  I booked the hotel, and we took a great trip that I hope he always remembers – because I will.

I re-tell the story because of our week in the adoption process.  After the letdown from the week before, we just went through the motions on Monday when presented with three new situations, again from the agency in Arizona.  (Without straying onto a tangent topic, we dismissed the first one because of her marijuana use during pregnancy.  Not that she had used it, but that she does use it, continues to, and admits to having used it the day she filled out the application – in week 39 of the pregnancy [full term is 40 weeks for the unexperienced].  But that’s a blog for another day.)  We did ask that our profile be shown to the other two and went on about our week.

I will be honest – I didn’t give either of them much thought.  Even though you become aware of it, it’s hard to combat the feeling of callousness to the process itself.  We had said the same thing so many times, with the same lacking results, that I just didn’t dwell on them as I might normally do.  Busy week at school, combined with the kids’ after school schedules, makes it easier to just not think about it.  On Thursday afternoon, I got a phone call from the case worker in Arizona saying hello, how are you guys, and you’ve been chosen by one of our birth mothers.

The phone call lasted less than two minutes, but may have changed our lives.  I called Jaclyn so that she could roam around the rest of the day in shock as well, and finished out the day.  We decided not to share the news with anyone until after we could get a little farther with this birth mother, so as not to meet the same fate as last time.  We did that on Friday, with a 15-minute FaceTime session with both the birth mother and birth father, with the case worker present.

There are a couple of tidbits that stick out to us as pretty special.  First, is a feeling of confirmation from God from two weeks ago.  Jaclyn and I both felt really great about dealing with this agency in Arizona, and were really drawn to the first birthmother that didn’t choose us (in favor of Adam and Jack – or Eve and Jill – mind you).  And second is what we gained through the brief conversation with the birth parents yesterday afternoon.

Though they live in Arizona now, and are still really young (24 and 19), both birth parents are actually from New England.  The mother is from New Hampshire, while the father
is from Massachusetts.  We have been told from the get go that birth mothers/par
ents, when perusing profile books for adoptive couples, will cue in on the most random of things as that connective point – that reason to say “yes, that’s the one.”  Further encouragement to just “be ourselves” in the profile book, showing what we are really like.  Friends of ours here in Milan that have two adopted children tell us the story that, through the entire profile book, their son’s birth mother zoned in on the breed of dog in one of their pictures.  It was the same breed the mother had owned as a child, and thought it would be great if her baby had the same dog.  Who knew?  Going back to ours, we had already been told that they didn’t even look at a second profile book.  Ours was on top, and they loved seeing the outdoors, sports, and just being active.  But, in conversation on Friday, the dad told us something that just tied together what God laid out eleven months before.  He said, “We were already excited about everything in your book, but I just loved the picture of you and your son and Fenway Park.  I grew up in Boston and have been to Fenway lots of times.”

So, let me get this straight God.  Out of hundreds of AD’s from around the state, You put my name card in Mike Kimmons’ hand to draw out.  You made it clear to Jaclyn and me that Gabe should be the one to go on the trip.  And, even in brief moments of doubt over finances, You gave us reasons to go ahead and take the trip.  Just so our son’s birth father would have the final confirmation that he needed.  That’s getting close to overkill. . . . but we’ll take it.

So, at this point in the process, we will sign matching papers on Monday and send in a sizable down payment, so to speak.  Just to keep us hopping, since we are never busy, this baby boy (Kara has promised to love one more boy, against her better judgement) is due on April 23.  Starting at the end of spring break, we will basically be “on the ready” to head to Phoenix at a moment’s notice so that we are there at or very near the birth.  But, in the meantime, we have tons to do – in our spare time.

To pray for us now, pray that we won’t send the paper in or send the money if this is not God’s will.  Pray also for the health of the mother and baby, as well as their peace with their decision of adoption, and their decision to bless us.  Pray for the doctors that watch over her.  And pray that we won’t just “get busy” in preparations, but that we are preparing the right things, in the right order.  Finally, pray for the three Scott kids already riding this wave.  While they are excited (at different levels), there is still some uncertainty for them on just what a new baby will mean.  It’s been six years since Kara or Gabe have had this experience, and it will all be brand new to JP.

“For as heaven is higher than earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” – Isaiah 55:9