So, many of you may have already heard from Rebecca and Caleb their most recent news regarding their growing family. If you haven’t, here is a copy of the letter that the Faries’ sent yesterday evening:
Dear Friends,
Ok, about an hour after I sent out our big announcement (which took us hours of prayer and preparation to send out) I discovered that we are not only preparing for babies from Ethiopia, but I am also pregnant. We have really laughed a lot at our house and wondered what in the world God is planning for us. After we got over our initial surprise we started to really think about why we want to adopt. We want to adopt not just because we want to have babies in our arms and in our home: we want to adopt so these babies will have homes and parents’ arms. We want to adopt not because we want a baby, but because babies need families. Certainly our motives are mixed, and certainly we have no idea what we are getting into. But we decided that we wanted to continue with the adoption process alongside this pregnancy.
We met with our social worker and spilled our good news to her, fearing that she would think we were completely crazy, and she laughed and told us that she, too, was pregnant when she adopted her son. We couldn’t believe how God was putting people around us to encourage us in our crazy mission. Our social worker agreed to talk to the adoption agency on our behalf. We prayed that God would take away our zeal for this if the answer was “no”. We waited while our social worker and adoption agency met and discussed.
Our adoption agency, however, in spite of our spirited petitions and letters, believes that it would be best for our family to wait to adopt until after our biological baby is born. This process took two weeks and during those weeks we have felt so sad at the loss of these boys that we have started imagining as our own. But now we know that the boys that God has planned for our family will not be ready to be adopted until we are allowed to adopt them. CWA will let us get a referral beginning in October 2009. It is hard to Caleb and I to wait. (But my morning sickness sure helps me to be thankful that I’m only taking care of Beatrice right now).
We will not lose our place in the program or any of the money that we or you have sent to CWA. Now we have more time to raise the money and that will be a great help. We also have more time to collect all the paperwork and to prepare our home (and to sell our car to buy a VW bus).
It’s a funny thing to have to watch how your enthusiasm and zeal behave as time passes. In a year, when we do adopt, our passion for adoption will have settled into a more comfortable thing. Maybe Caleb and I will be grownups next year. We will certainly keep you updated as we continue.
In the meantime, the pregnancy seems great so far. We are absolutely delighted, and I am sick as a dog.
Thank you so much for your love for our little family,
Caleb and Rebecca
Caleb and Rebecca