Mirian's Story Part III (3 of 4)

As Emily continued back at work, her energy levels only increased. The doctors and other fellow employees at Cascade Eye Center were so supportive and understanding of Emily's procedure and welcomed her back with open arms.

Once Emily was completely healthy (about a year later) we started back with the adoption. Unfortunately at that point, Brenda Brown (from LDS Family Services) had taken a job elsewhere. We were sorry to see her go. On the bright side, we were happy to meet her replacement Carlos Watkins, who maintained the positive experience and even brought in his own expertise. When we started meeting with Carlos, he informed us that during the time of Emily's cancer, the paperwork had been changed to online and that our hard copies of the paperwork were now no longer enough to get us approved. Hence, we had to redo our paperwork. Luckily it was saved on our computer so it became a lot of cut and paste . . . . A LOT. Once we finally finished our paperwork, it took about 2 months to officially approve us as potential adoptive parents (this time frame is completely normal, it didn't take 2 months because they had a hard time giving us the okay). Once we were approved, all we could do was wait and pray.

We were told that it could take anywhere between 3 months to 3 years. Obviously that wasn't a guarantee, but the point was that no one knows and it could take a while to have a child placed with us. The reason is that in the state of Washington (and probably other states too), the birth mother selects the adoptive parents. We feel that this is a wonderful thing. Too many times when thinking about adoption, we as a society think about the struggles of the potential adoptive parents (which can be challenging). We as a society rarely think about the struggles that a birth mother may also have gone through and how difficult a decision they will be making. By allowing the birth mother to choose the adoptive parents, it helps to comfort the birth mother through any struggles that she may be experiencing by knowing that her child will be well taken care of.

In January 2009, about 2 1/2 months after we had finally become "approved" as potential adoptive parents, we were notified that LDS Family Services was changing their website and that we had approximately one month to re-input all our data into the new website. So we had the wonderful opportunity of filling out our paperwork for the 3rd time. As you can imagine, we weren't excited about this task, however the website allowed for a more detailed search of potential adoptive parents and we were optimistic that this would help the birth mother of our future child to find us easier.

Once we had inputted the information into the new website, we were told that it would only be a couple of weeks before the website would be up and running. It could be accessed, but it was still a beta site at that point. The original but slightly more difficult to use website was still operational. After a few weeks we asked again and had been advised that the church wanted to look into the new site further and that it would still be a bit before the new site was up and running. We were a little discouraged as we knew Heavenly Father wanted us to adopt but the new site wasn't up and running and we felt this would limit our chances of being chosen. We continued to wait with as much patience as possible, but it was very difficult. While the new site was being delayed, we almost felt like we were starting our "waiting period" from the beginning and that nothing would happen at least until the new site was up. To this day, the new website still isn't up and running.

One of our favorite t.v. shows to watch is The Office on Thursday nights. On March 19, 2009, we were in the basement watching the weekly episode of The Office as Russ' phone began to vibrate. An email had just come in. As Russ read the email, he was silent as a mouse. Upon having read the email he handed the phone to Emily. Emily studied the email also in complete silence. After Emily read the email, we ran up stairs to the computer to make sure this email was real and to study it further.