Back at the beginning

Tomorrow we will attend our agency's mandatory informational day. This officially kicks off our quest to add Baby #2 to our family. Our goal is to be back on the list & waiting sometime around the first of March. More to come on that, but for now OMG!

It's amazing how different and yet how similar this feels to the first time we did this. Many of the same questions are racing through my head:

Will we be the only ones there?
Will anyone want to hear our story?
How long will we wait this time?
Will a first family pick us? Ever???

How different will this time be from Tulip's adoption?

Will we get to have another open adoption or will it be closed?

Will we get to know our first family or will it be an emergency placement?

Here were my thoughts after our first class in the spring of 2009:

We had an amazing time at our adoption class earlier this month. We met other families at our same place, families adopting for a second time, and even a family adopting after having three birth children. It was very intense as you can imagine but I finally felt like we made progress in this journey. It was one more step. It also raised all kinds of insecurities and has had me praying even more since then that God knows how this is supposed to work out--and that when we finally ARE ready to have a match with a birth family, WE will be ready. I have also been praying for our future birth family--that they would be led to adoption, that they would know in their hearts that it was what they wanted to do and that they would know us when they saw our profile as the right adoptive parents. Please, if you pray, I ask that you pray for us and our future birth family. It is the only way I know to not live in complete and utter fear--and we can use all the help we can get!

So if you are the praying-kind, I suppose I'm asking for you to throw one our way again. Our future first family has been on my mind and I am struggling with what to write in our letter. The words are all a-jumble--so clarity would be good. But more importantly, I am praying that we are ready when we need to be, that our first family will know us without a doubt when they see our profile, and that we can enter this process without the fear and sheer terror that plagued us (well, me) before. Peace. That is what I pray for.