Step Two: Choosing an Agency

As the winds of hope blew, we searched for an adoption agency to facilitate the program. There are a ton of ways to adopt and a ton of agencies who want to take your money, I mean help you with your adoption. We had decided the expense of an international or direct/baby adoption was beyond our means. We had discovered the Foster to Adopt program, more commonly known as “Special Needs” adoption, and decided this was the one for us.

I started making phone calls. Many agencies don’t actually have human beings answering their phones. The automated “menu” is often encrypted with terms a newbie to the adoption process doesn’t understand. I was going down the list, leaving messages, when unexpectedly I heard a live person’s voice. At first I didn’t respond to the friendly, “Homes of St. Mark, how can I help you?” The friendly voice came again, “Homes of St. Mark, may I help you?” I fumbled and then blurted, “I want to adopt, but I don’t know where to start.” The friendly voice then informed me of an open house and gave us an invitation to meet with live people. We accepted the invitation. Our door was open, and we were walking through.

At the open house we met with live people from the agency and live people in the same phase as us. We were shown pictures and given testimony of real children and real people becoming parents. We were informed of the processes, the expenses and given suggestions on how to get started and how to fund. We were even assigned a case worker that would hold our hand and help us through.

Our Case Worker was Our Case Worker, not the child’s. This beautiful, wonderful person talked to us, learned about us, counseled us and got us through the entire process from beginning to end. She helped us cross all our T’s and dot all our I’s for certification, she helped us get a child placed in our home, and she held our hands at the final court date that made our child legally ours. She was wonderful. She didn’t just hold our hands, she encouraged us, cried with us (well, she cried with me; my husband does not cry.) and rejoiced with us.

When everything was done, my husband and I both felt a bit of loss as we said good bye to our Case Worker. We touched base with her a few times, but we were moving on to raising our children. She was moving on to helping new families on their journey. Since then, she has left the agency to explore new ways of helping people. We have lost touch with her, but we will never forget her. We can never thank her enough for the part she played in helping us grow our family. We can never thank her enough.