The Next Step

This morning I woke up especially bummed about the waiting and wondering about what is happening with this adoption.  I called my sister who said, 

"You sound sad, did you get a call?"  

"No," I replied, "just sick and tired of not knowing anything!" 

Later as I was in process of emailing my worker for this week's update, my other sister called and encouraged me to just give her a call.  I hung up, called my worker and left a voicemail, and called my sister back. 

One minute after hanging up with my sister, my phone's display lit up with my worker's number.  I answered it and forced my cheeriest "hello".  She greeted me and then said, 

"You'll never guess what I am looking at..."

"Please, please, please tell me it's an email!?!" I practically begged.  Scratch that, I literally begged.

"Yep! And I am forwarding it on to you right now.  Now let's see, where is your email... man I have a lot of Sarah's in my address book... ok now Justin's email...."

As she gave me this play by play of forwarding the email, I felt like I was a contestant on a competition game where they build up the suspense to say who the winner is.  I wanted to scream... "Just read it to me on the phone!!"

She sent the email and said that their caseworker contacted her to say that they had just finished reviewing home studies and were wondering if we were still interested in pursuing the case.  She wanted to set up a meeting and was asking about our availability.

So just like that, after moping around and feeling sorry for myself all morning, I found out that we are moving onto the next step!  This meeting is called a "collateral" and is where the team working with kids meets with the team working with parents and they share more information about the case.  In some ways, it is kind of like a job interview... except you are interviewing to be parents.

I do not know if there are other families meeting with their team, or if there are, how many.  I don't know if they will like us or if we will end up being the adoptive placement they go with.  But I do know that I haven't wiped the smile off my face all day and am THRILLED to even be moving on to the next step!!

Thank you for your prayers and keep them coming!!