When you want to use that Fire Escape Plan... {Adoption}

Note: Our first home study with Children's Aid Society is complete... and we're wiping our brows and high-fiving each other over here. 
Ps. We're still working away on our bathroom floor (next step: grout). Wish us luck.

*

She asks us what our challenges would be.

When we're dunked into parenthood and adoption and we're sopping wet with all these new experiences... only being marred two short years.

I'm so ready to crack open wide... with all these fears.

She nods compassionately and scribbles down these answers and there's no erasing them now... so forget this facade.

The handyman draws out this fire escape plan with dashes and arrows and markers. (It's one of the many requirements).

And it's so well done... and I wonder if it could help me navigate my way out of this plan to a more secure place.

Where I know what's next.

And there's no risk of being hurt or burned.

Where I could live this comfortable life.

And she could erase those challenges and fears from her notes.

Then, as if strategic and intentional, she asks us what the other half of this couple is like.

And you can imagine my first word as I look into the profile of my handyman... kind.

Patient.

Hardworking.

Loving.

And oh yes, I won't be in this alone. There's this life partner who vowed to be there through it all... all those ups and downs. When it's gets hard, and the days long.

And he's says to her how he loves that his pretty half is willing to learn, and love him, and work hard alongside him.

She records all of it into her notes.

He continues as she writes... because that's what loving husbands do... they could talk and brag for hours about their wife.

He says he loves how she lives this Christ-centered life.

The social worker looks up, her pen in mid air...

And it's that which outweighs all the rest.

I smile.

She writes down that this wife has good moral and ethical code. She misses it completely...

And I remember that I don't need this map, and these arrows, to show where to escape too. 

Because I'm secure in Him. 

That there's no escaping this God... and how His love pours out and fully covers these fears.

So we wade through this questions, and meetings, and paperwork...

Like we're doing it all for Him, not man.

Knowing when the emergencies come how He will be our plan. 

(Soaking in these lyrics today).



So lucky to be this man's wife: Using a shop-vac to clean unseen spots minutes before the social worker arrives. 

Delighted to have found some change... and skittles.