Our First Class

Our first class went well, I thought. We were supposed to meet for two hours. We actually stayed longer than that, but I really thought that it went by really fast. It was very interesting and everyone seemed so excited to get started. It was kind of hard to believe that the 2+ hours passed so quickly. I half expected our class to be boring, but I wasn't disappointed to be wrong! We ended up having homework and apparently that will be a weekly thing. I didn't expect that, but that is ok too. We have 3 more Thursday classes and then an all day Saturday class. After the Saturday class we have 4 home studies to do. One with just me and one with just Jonathan and two more with both of us. They have 90 days to approve or deny us. We are hoping to be approved by the end of the year and pray that we can begin taking care of kids very soon thereafter! Just because I know that some of you are curious, I will go ahead and say that we have to be foster parents for 6 months before we can adopt. They are really stressing that babies are not the norm for adoptions in the system. They also gave us a statistic that over 50% of the children in the TN foster system are reunited with their families. A couple of years ago that would have really, really scared me. It still does, to be honest, but I can also look to my parents example and others that I have known who are in the system and see their experiences and know that sometimes birth parents can change for the better and it is my job to love them and their children through that. I know that it will be MUCH harder to do than I'm thinking right now. I'm just praying that we can be the example to the children and parents that we need to be and when the parents can't or won't change then I hope that we can be the parents those children need. I also pray that when the parents DO change and are able to be parents again, that we are able to let go. We know that it will be hard either way.