The light isn't always just at the end of the tunnel.

If you're keeping score along with my wife, it's now been 13 weeks since we were activated with American Adoptions. As you can probably tell from her last post, Carrie is almost literally climbing the walls in anticipation. It's easy for me to know - not think, not believe, but KNOW - that things will happen for us exactly when they're meant to happen, and not a moment earlier. But just like I read in "The Brotherhood of Joseph", it's a whole lot harder to convince Carrie of that.

Fortunately for us, we have our adoptive family specialist, Kelli. The first thing you have to understand is how our profile gets in the hands of prospective birthmothers. When a birthmother contacts the agency, they counsel her about her decision, take down her information, and then send her up to 20 possible matches based on her preferences and how they fit our APQ (Adoptive Parent Questionnaire). So, before we can ever make a match with birthparents, our profile has to match what they're looking for enough to have been sent out. That's where Kelli was able to help us by illuminating our exposure over the last 3 months. Kelli conferenced both of us in Tuesday afternoon and gave us a good pep talk. I know it made me feel better than I already had been, and I hope it helped Carrie make through a few more weeks.

Without going into too many details because they don't want you to focus just on "The Number", Kelli explained to us that our exposure had been very good over the last three months, all things considered. She explained that their expected average is 10 exposures per month - 10 times that an adoptive families profile will be sent out to potential birthparents. She said that our exposure had been below average, but on the high end of the range, so I'm guessing we've averaged somewhere between 7 and 10 exposures per month. That's great, though, because we've got some strikes against us. First off, due to Kentucky laws about licensing and facilitation, American Adoptions can only show our profile in the seven states where they're licensed. Secondly, we've known all along that even though our budget is a lot of money to us, it's on the low end of the scale. What it comes down to is that even though we can only be shown in 7 states and our budget is low, our openness in terms of race and medical background is overcoming our drawbacks. Kelli also mentioned that they had received some good feedback from some of the times when our profile had been sent out.

So...we're still waiting, but at least there's been a little bit of light to keep us going.

Well, it's been nine weeks since the day we became active. I can tell you that both of us are reacting very differently. Ted is going about his days without worry that this is going to happen sooner than later. I on the other hand have become obsessed about it. Will we find a birth mother who will be drawn to our profile? And when will it happen? I obsessively check the website to make sure our profile is still there and the daily number of waiting families. I check to see if there are any "adoption situations" that might be a match for us. I look at the forum and converse with other waiting mothers. Two of which were matched in the last few weeks. It's nice to be able to talk with others who are going just as crazy as I am. If I stay busy I don't think of it as much. But I can tell you that most of my waking hours wonder if and when we will be blessed with a child.

I made it through the holidays with hopes that this will be the last Christmas that we will have without a family of our own. Christmas isn't meant to be for adults. It's the light on a child's face when they see the tree or Santa for the first time. It's their laughter that completes the holiday. And that is one of the other things that our home lacks. The light and laughter of a child.