Update

"Our steps are made firm by the Lord, when he delights in our way; though we stumble, we shall not fall headlong, for the Lord holds us by the hand." Psalm 37:23-24

I've waited almost 9 months to tell this story. It's painful. It makes me angry. I cried, the ugly cry and I needed to figure out how to explain what we experienced without tarnishing the reputation of adoption. I feel that I'm a testament of the goodness of adoption so I, in no way, would want to deter anyone from adopting if they feel called but this is our story, I'm proud to share it, we will build our family through adoption and if anyone personally knows us who's reading this, my stubbornness becomes electric in times like this. Electric. So after months of training, time away from our boys, 1/2  a homestudy we closed (in October) our file with the agency that we were contracted with.
Without going in to a million details, because is the morning and I'm drinking coffee not a bloody mary, the expectations of our agency drastically changed. We weren't naive, we had full understanding of their policies, took a lot of time making our decision and they changed things on not just us, but everyone. Not little changes, but big changes. They weren't changes that helped the foster children, they weren't changes that protected them from abuse, neglect and trauma and they sure has heck weren't changes that we were made aware of during our training. Basically, these were changes that protected the agency from any further prosecution because of abuse cases in their own foster homes. As my husband said, in his businessman mind, "they're doing a risk assessment on us". They, as it appeared to us, were in the business of covering their asses, no protecting children. So, after our first homestudy, meeting in October, learning about the news changes in the agency in those moments with the social worker, we decided that it would be a disservice to our biological children and to all of our hearts to continue with them. I lost my shit.
We had so many failures already. If we got back 2 years about and sift through posts, although I can find beauty and hope in them, we have struggled to grow our family through adoption. As my husband says, we don't really have to know why, we just have to keep on working. (his work ethic is impeccable) It's true but at the time, we had no plan. I'm a planner, I plan things, it's my job. I have three kids under 7, it's sorta what I do. You feel me? No plan. Zero plan. I haven't had those types of feelings to process with children around. We had to tell the kids, we had to deal with the fact that our goal we'd been working towards, was disintegrating. We had to tell family, and friends that we had no plan. I'm pretty good at expressing my feelings and I'm still struggling to find words. Have you ever just sat there and cried? I did. Not because I was angry, because we wanted those foster kids. WE wanted them. Just normal folks, willing to change the dynamic of our family and try to put those kids back together with the pieces that we had for them and we were excited to do it. Knowing all the struggles ahead. We were ready and they thought we were a risk. So we had some healing to do to say the least.

After 6 months or so after closing the file with the agency we decided to move along, completing our homestudy for domestic adoption. We knew we'd need it and just getting it over with was our primary goal. I really wasn't in the mood to talk about our childhood trauma much anymore so getting that done and over with was a number one priority. After we completed it, it was a big weight off our shoulders and we felt like we could really move on in finding how to build our family. Just recently, we've put in another, and hopefully our last, paperwork in with an agency here in Texas for the adoption of one or possibly a sibling group of kiddos through the state of Texas. We, have a plan folks, feeling good about it. We prayed a lot, A LOT, we talked about it with the boys and we're ready to get this show on the road. So...here we go again. ( insert Whitesnake song here, minus girl on car from the music video). Thank you Jesus.