How I became a Father continued

How I became a Father
Part III
By the time we "got over ourselves" and went to Bethany Christian Services, we were sure this was the way God wanted us to go, since he had more or less seemed to close the other doors. This didn't mean we were resentful of the prospect of adoption, rather, somewhere along the way our hearts were changed and we longed to open our home to a child that needed a home. It took us nearly 4 months to gather all the documentation, fill out all the forms, complete the self study, have the home study done, etc etc. Those of you have adopted are well acquainted with all the enormity of it all. We finally completed our home study and were approved in Feburary of 2005. When we filled out "Open to" form, my wife checked everything. To some extent, we may have felt that by expanding the breadth of the various needs that we would consider looking at, we might proportionally shorten our wait time. Keep in mind, we had already been "waiting" for 3 years or so. Now that we FINALLY were on track with Bethany, they told us our wait could be 6 months all the way up to ANOTHER TWO YEARS! The difference however, with this prospect was that Laurie and I both seemed to be at peace with it. We knew God had brought us to this place, and we had started to actually trust Him about the whole matter.
Nevertheless, we still signed up for many of the so-called special needs, including-
African-American or "mixed race"
International
Known maternal medical history
known maternal drug use,
etc, etc.

oh, and siblings. They're special needs too....

How I became a Father

How I became a Father
by Skip Gienapp

Part I. Infertility.

Part II.

I'm the oldest of 8 kids in my family, the last 4 of which were adopted. I never actually lived with my younger adopted siblings, ( I was already at Covenant) yet it is still a large part of our family culture. Our church in Chattanooga, New City Fellowship, has a large adoption culture as well. I guess we felt that this helped "qualify" us for adoption somehow. It seemed like a low-risk proposition, compared to say, IVF. In any case somewhere along the way we "decided" that adoption was the way to go. We were tentative at first, consulting a lawyer, creating our first profile, quietly easing into the adoption market. We really had no idea what was going to happen, but we had heard that a private adoption was cheaper than going through an agency, because you were working directly with a lawyer. That sounded good to us, we didn't want to get tangled up with any "agency". But weeks stretched to months and then to over two years, with nothing happening. My wife doesn't mind waiting a little bit if she feels "progress" is being made. But waiting for a lawyer to call you, is a little like waiting for a fish to swim by and snag his tail on your empty hook. I think our profile was shown maybe once in two and half years- and my wife, when she realized this saw her hopes and dreams crushed again. We felt we had wasted almost 3 years waiting for a baby to fall into our laps. In the fall of 2004 we finally approached Bethany Christian Services.

To be continued...