Saturday, November 20, 2010

Homestudy

When a family decides to adopt they must complete a homestudy as part of the process. This is a very, very detailed description of your family and lives in print, done by a social worker that works with an adoption agency. You are stripped bare! Everything about every aspect of your life is up for grabs; finances, personal history, employment history, medical background, everything. Our agencies had friends of ours write letters about our marriage and character. Our values and morals and child rearing skills. We had our finger prints taken and our criminal records checked. We spoke with our social worker in her office together and separately. She came to our home when the children were here and when they were at school. She explored each room in our home. She asked extremely personal questions that made me squirm a bit, but were all together freeing.

We passed. We were deemed fit to raise another child in our home and thank God because we were already raising three! After our homestudy was complete, it was submitted to Holt and then forwarded on to Korea. And we waited some more as they read about us and explored our lives on paper. This part of the process was a tad stressful because I was afraid I had forgotten to share something vital and that they would discover it later and take away our passing grade. I would have dreams about trying to explain myself and not being able to articulate what I needed to say. I worried that I was too over-protective and they would see a smothering mother. I worried that they would look at my house and see a woman with OCD issues. I was afraid that they would see me for who I am and not like what they saw. They would see my heart and find it undeserving and lacking.

But, we passed. Our "paper pregnancy" was progressing along quite nicely except for the financial side of things, those were a bit slower....

1 comment:

  1. Stopping over to check out your blog. Looking forward to reading more! :)

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