Welcome to Square One

Just a few days ago, Julie told all of you about how excited we were to be attending our adoption seminar later on this month and to have a caseworker assigned to us. My my, how things change in such a short time.

I went to post office this morning, like I always do, to find a letter from Buckner. Normally, I would let Julie open it and take care of whatever it was that needed to be taken care of, but I didn't want to wait to see what the letter was about. I opened it and found out that all of the preparation, paperwork, and postage over the last 7 months was down the drain.

That's right, we have been rejected by Buckner. They turned us down...

Just typing those words hurts beyond imagination. This is one of the largest Christian adoption agencies in the world, and somehow a pastor and his wife are shot down. I don't get it. I don't know if I want to get it. All I know is that this hurts...a lot. More than I ever really thought it would or could. Of course, I never imagined that we would get rejected. Out of all the testimonies we've read about Buckner, I don't know if I've ever read about someone getting rejected. I guess it's not something people like to talk about. Wonder why?

What makes the situation more frustrating is that every single bit of contact we've had with the people at Buckner has been nothing but positive about our application. When the seminar in July conflicted with youth camp, they said "that's too bad, we really wanted you at this one" (not an exact quote but that's the spirit of what they said). After we returned the missing parts of our application, they promptly sent us an invitation to the September seminar and assigned us a caseworker. Then comes what I will probably hereafter call "Black Monday" and we get a cold, impersonal letter that essentially says, "Sorry, but we aren't willing to help you find a child after all, and we probably won't give you a reason why because we have a piece of paper you signed to hide behind."

We have some ideas as to why we were rejected, but they all revolve around the mistakes of some of my family. There is nothing about Julie and I that should have prevented us from using Buckner. Especially since nothing kept us from being foster parents in Oklahoma.

So now we have to figure out what to do next. We are still trying to decide how God wants to build our family. Biological. Adoption. Foster-adopt. Growing them in the back yard like the bad guys in Lord of the Rings. Pretending our dogs are our kids. E-bay. We don't know, but we do serve a God who does. That's about the only thing getting us through Black Monday.

Thanks for your prayers. They mean a lot right now.

Bobby