Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

"It's not you....it's me."

Five years!  It has been 5 years since we turned in our first adoption application to Bethany Christian Services.  It has been a wonderful relationship with BCS.  We had a few rough spots that we worked through but most of all there has been pure joy during our five year relationship. 

It hit me today that we were breaking up.  I am a little bit heartbroken.  Our family is complete. We are perfectly content as a family of four. Now that Penny's adoption is finalized, we are done. We have no reason to visit the agency office any more. That is it.  That chapter is closed now. We are onto a new chapter of our life. I am excited about it. I love the fact that we will not be thinking about the adoption process any more. The stress and anxiety that I have will not be adoption related anymore. (Yes, I will always be an anxious mess...but not about adoption anymore.)

Today we went to visit BCS. We brought little thank you gifts for our social workers for all of their hard work and for putting up with me!! As you can imagine, I can be a little bit of a basket case and these ladies were able to handle it!  Faith was the social worker on our side. She helped us through some of our tough application steps. We hit quite a few roadblocks with the application for Penny and Faith was able to help us navigate through it. And she stayed all the way up to the end when we went to court to finalize her adoption. Dawn Baker was the social worker for both Gus and Penny's birth moms. Dawn was the one who called us when we were chosen.  She was the one who was right there to introduce us to our beautiful children. She was the one to take our first family pictures with our kids. Since we didn't have family with us at the hospital to celebrate with us, Dawn filled that role and hugged us and celebrated with us. And let me tell you, this woman is worth her weight in gold.  She does an outstanding job and is just truly a kind and wonderful woman.  If you have seen her on MTV's Sixteen & Pregnant reality show, then you have a small glimpse into just how great she is.  She was our STAR before she became the tv star!  We have been truly blessed to have her ad part of our journey for the past four years!!

I know that we will still see those at Bethany Christian Services throughout life. They do have a big family picnic and fun run that we will always attend if we are able. And we have been asked again by the agency to speak on their behalf as adoptive parents. We will always be more than willing to help them out and we are so honored that they would ask us.  What a great way for us to give back to an organization that had helped us so much!

On a side note- in 2009, when Gus was born, the agency facilitated 28 adoptions. So far in 2013, they have 31 adoptions as of today.  16 of those adoptions are "gift babies" like Penny was. How awesome that they are able to help so many kids find their forever families!!

So as far as the break-up goes....we will still be friends!