My Meltdown

We got home from orientation and began looking at our next round of paperwork to fill out. We had 10 days to get all of this paperwork turned back in and to complete our scrapbook and turn in our first big payment. I saw the amount of money we needed and immediately began to panic. But then I remembered that my sister had mentioned about a month prior to this that I would have some inheritance money from mom when she settled all of her medical bills, etc. I hadn't really thought much more about it because I knew as a single mom she just didn't have much. She lived paycheck to paycheck. So, we began praying that God would provide the money we needed to turn in to the agency and soon. My sister called and said she had the check for me and I couldn't believe it....it was just a few hundred dollars shy of what we needed to turn into the agency! You see, my mom was playing a role in our adoption and she wasn't even with us on earth. Only God could pull that off!

We were given pointers on making our scrapbook while we were at orientation so that was the BIG project we had to complete after we got home. Basically, birthmoms come into the agency to make an adoption plan for their child and they look through these scrapbooks to pick out some couples they think they would choose to adopt their baby. The birthmoms are encouraged to take a few scrapbooks with them to think about it and then to set up phone calls with the couples to interview them and ask them questions. Then you(adoptive parents) are "matched" with a birthmom if she chooses you to adopt her baby. That is how the process works. So, needless to say we were very nervous about this scrapbook seeing as how it was the first impression that birthmoms were going to get of us. I had gotten together often with girlfriends and done scrapbooking while our husbands were studying. So, I felt pretty confident that I could put together something great.....that is until I walked into the scrapbooking store that cold day in December. I had a meltdown. I mean the kind of meltdown you DO NOT want to have in public with snot flying everywhere and crying so hard I was shaking kind of meltdown. It's funny now to look back on that day but it was in NO way funny then. I think everything came crashing down at that moment and the pressure was too much.....we had just undergone so much to get to that point. And then to think that us becoming parents was dependent on what kind of scrapbook paper I picked out! Well, no of course not....I was taking God out of the picture and doubting that HE had a plan and it didn't matter what our scrapbook looked like!

I managed to pull myself together after no less than five people asked me if I needed something or if they could call someone for me. I finally gathered my supplies and checked out....I gave myself a pep talk on the way home. "You can do this Jess! It's not about how good your scrapbook is! God has a baby for us!" I spent all my free time over the next couple of weeks working on the scrapbook and we mailed in about a dozen copies to the adoption agency. It was a Wednesday and I was at work that morning. Someone from the agency called to say they received our package with the rest of the paperwork, our first big payment, and our scrapbooks. She said that everyone at the agency commented on what a good job we had done on our scrapbook.....I sighed and smiled. She also said that they would begin showing it to birthmoms right away and hopefully we would hear from her again soon. Little did I know she would call again later that night!

To be continued...