Persistence

I've always known that I could be somewhat of a persistent person (some of you are laughing right now!) and that has definitely helped us on our journey to Maggie. It's amazing to me how little people communicate. I realize that we are not their only case, but this is our only case. I've also learned that if you don't ask the questions, you won't necessarily get the answers. I've also learned that sometimes you have to be a pest to have someone listen to you. In the process of fostering to adopt, you truly are your own advocate. Sure, we've had some great people on our side ~ our agency caseworker, Maggie's CASA advocate, Maggie's CPS caseworker ~ but even then, the communication is brief, staggered, or different (depending on who you are talking to at the time).

I've learned how to "play" the system with caseworkers and how to get information without trying to make it sound like that's what I'm after (ha!) I'll send an email asking a question about something that I may already know the answer to....only so that I can lead into a question, like....oh, by the way, any word on this? or that? It's worked every time! :)

Today was proof that my playing the game and persistence paid off.

I had been on the phone with Patti, Maggie's CASA advocate, that morning trying to see if there was any new information. Patti was more frustrated than me, because she hadn't heard anything from anyone either (again, great communicating between the different entities).

I told her I was going to email Cory @ CPS. I did and this basically what I wrote: Hey Cory, hope you're doing well. I just wanted to confirm what time we are supposed to be in court on Monday, as my agency caseworker is going to be there to represent us. If you can let me know if it's at 9:30 or 1:30 that would be great. {I already knew that it was 1:30}. Oh, by the way, I'm guessing that no news on Maggie's birth mom signing relinquishment papers last week means that she didn't do it...or do you know anything differently? Thanks.

***Side note....we didn't tell anyone, because it's been going back and forth and we weren't holding our breaths, but we received a call late Thursday night informing us that Maggie's BM was going in to see the atty on Friday morning to sign the relinquishment of rights papers. We never heard from anyone on whether or not she showed up or not. No one seemed to know.***

Here's the email response I got back from Cory:
"I ran into BM's attorney yesterday at court and she did relinquish!!!!! It was on Monday. She did sign, she wants to be able to write letters and receive letters but she signed it!"

What?! Are you kidding me?! WHOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOOO! I couldn't believe it! We've been so worried and consumed with wonder and worry these past 6 days, not knowing what happened. So many questions and thoughts went through our minds. Did she show up? Did she sign? Why didn't she show up? What does that mean for Monday? Will the judge give her more time to relinquish (which is typical)? Will we have to wait until June (which would be 1 year since Maggie was removed from her birth mom) to be able to terminate? And the list could go on and on....

If Cory hadn't have run into her attorney at court, we'd still be wondering. We'd still be waiting. I mean, seriously, how difficult would it have been for the attorney to respond to all the inquiries and just answered "yes" to did she sign? Not too hard, if you ask me. But no one asked me.

I'm glad that I was persistent. This whole experience has shown us how much we take our emotions into our own hands. It's so easy to say all the right things and to tell ourselves that we need to trust in the Lord and to give all of this to Him, but we are so quick to take them back and hoard them and keep them all to ourselves. And in the end, all we did was cause ourselves worry, sleepless nights and stress.

So, where do we stand right now? All parties involved (except for us) will be in court on Monday to present all the signed papers. It's basically a formality. Then the unknown birth father's (this is a whole other post) attorney will terminate his rights. Then within a few weeks, our CPS caseworker will transfer our file to the adoption division, where we have been told, that we will be assigned to our first caseworker, since she handles all the adoptions. This is great news for us, as we have a great relationship with her and she has been involved with our case since the beginning. This should hopefully help hurry things along. It will then take another month or so to get our paperwork done and on to the attorney to get us on the judges' docket. We've been told that adoptions are only done twice a month in Montgomery County, so this is why it will take a few extra months to get finalized.

But honestly, the hardest, most stressful part is over. What was supposed to be an open & shut, no worries, easy, no risk case turned out to be much more than that. The Lord knew what He was doing when He revealed very little to us at the beginning. It is very likely that without the Lord's guidance, we could've missed out on our beautiful sweet blessing, Maggie Joy. We still have some months before she is legally ours, but we are so thankful that this part of the story is closed.

I think this Momma & Daddy will sleep a little better tonight...

We are so thankful for all your prayers and love along the way. You have walked through the valleys and mountains of our journey and we love you all so much because of it. The Lord's faithfulness and love towards us is overwhelming ~ we just know that He has great plans for our sweet little girl.