Last week, a friend was sharing with me about the Lord reminding them to pray expectant for God to move in the situation they are praying over. It was a beautiful reminder that the Lord sees the desires of our hearts, He hears our prayers, and beckons us to trust Him in His leading and work.
We’ve been reminded so clearly of that ourselves in this journey. In late July 2024, when we were still trying to conceive a biological child and before we even started pursuing adoption, we felt the Lord prompting us to begin preparing a space for a baby and to trust Him to provide – to prepare expectant for Him to move.
To be honest, the idea of starting to prepare a nursery brought up a lot of conflicting feelings. I know that choosing to trust God is never the wrong choice. At the same time, I was really struggling with where we were on our journey to start a family. Some days, I was perfectly fine. Other days, I would burst into tears just seeing a family with young kids at a restaurant or hearing someone else talk about their pregnancy. We didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t necessarily think we would get pregnant given the fertility challenges we were facing, but we also hadn’t talked about shifting up our timelines with pursuing adoption at that time. All I knew was that we both kept feeling like the Lord was telling us to get ready.
The weekend we decided to say yes, we packed up everything in our guest room, put it in storage, and went to Home Depot to start looking a paint colors and had everything painted by the second week of August. By the end of September, we had experienced the situation that led to us to discuss adopting sooner. October, we felt like this was the next step the Lord was leading us to and began looking into agencies. November, we submitted our application with our agency and joined the secondary waiting list. December, we were told we would be moving off the secondary list and begin our home study in January. End of January, we started our home study.
The last two-three weeks, we’ve been sprinting through our home study. Last week, Matt and I both had our individual interviews. One thing the home study writer told us is that they typically caution parents against preparing a nursery until they have a match because of the toll that waiting can take at times. I responded by laughing and saying that you then have people like us who the Lord told to start preparing the space before we even knew we were pursuing adoption. She mentioned that she thought it was probably still hard for us to go in there at times, and I was able to joyfully share that it actually isn’t. It’s so far the opposite. During our journey to conceive, I felt so hopeless at so many points and it all felt so heavy, but I have so much hope when I step into that room because I know without a shadow of doubt that God is calling us to trust Him in this process and from the moment we said yes, the doors just started flinging open. So, we will continue to wait full of hope, full of expectation that He will continue to make a way and provide and prepare us every step of the way.
Yesterday, we had the last step of our portion of the home study – our home safety walkthrough. It is the last portion that we personally have to do. Now we just wait for the last of our references to be sent in and for the home study writer to finish writing everything up. Once it’s fully written, it will go to the agency for review and approval and then it will be sent to us last for final review and signature. She expects that we will be able to review it by the weekend if everything goes according to plan – early next week if there are any delays, but that we should be fully approved by the end of next week.
We also received some other exciting updates during the walkthrough. With our last update, I mentioned we were third on the list for a placement but because of the movement that the agency has had and situations that have arisen, we have been moved up to second on the list for a placement.
They asked us yesterday how quickly we would be able to accept a placement if one became available – not that they have anyone currently to match us with but just preparing. We let them know that we are fully funded through the match and are working to quickly close the gap on our placement fees. With the placement fee, we would have until two months after baby comes home before that is due, so we would have some time to finish getting the funds together if we received a quick placement for any reason.
The agency doesn’t typically match birth parent(s) with adoptive families until they’re at least through their second trimester to protect the hearts of all parties involved, so the longest window of notice we would have is three months and the shortest would be getting a call that a baby was just born and the birth parent(s) have decided to make an adoption plan, in which case, we would go to the hospital same day.
We also learned that they are going to start showing our profile to birth moms looking to make an adoption plan as soon as today which has both Matt and I feeling…
It could still be 6 months to a year before we receive a match or we could get one very quickly. We really don’t know. In the meantime, we will continue to hold hope, wait expectantly, and continue to prepare our hearts and home.
We are just so overwhelmed by the goodness of God in this journey! Thank you for your support and following along.
With Love,
The Schoonovers
The Schoonovers 
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