Consider it pure Joy...

I really had to keep bringing this to the forefront of my mind after our homestudy on the 30th.  We knew it was going to be two hours and we knew that they were going to question us and our children on everything under the sun and I knew that I would struggle with some of the questions because they would be personal or maybe a little aggrevating but I was not prepared for just how upsetting it would be when I felt like they were attacking some major things in our life.  For about a month before the homestudy there seemed to be a really big theme in our life of being thankful no matter what the circumstances.  Finding the reasons I was thankful for this homestudy was what kept me from going insane after it was over!
I think a big part of the reason this was so overwhelming for me was just because it was at the end of a very long week for us and I was emotionally drained.  My grandfather, whom we were all very close to, passed away Monday night.  He had suffered a stroke in January and we had known that he would eventually pass away but it was very difficult because we had wanted him to pass peacefully at home but he ended up needing to be hospitalized for the day and the doctor would not let my family visit because they found that grandpa had the influenza B virus and we were prone to get it.  My parents told the doctor that my family had been with grandpa four of his last eight days, so we would have already been exposed.  The doctor said that if we showed any signs of getting this flu, then we were to go to the doctor immediately and be put on antibiotics.  Tuesday we spent the whole day with family and Wednesday Josiah came down with the flu.  Normally I do not get overwhelmed when the kids are sick.  It is a part of life, I have my natural arsenal and I have prayer warriors for friends; so we always make it through.  This time around, because of it being the thing that ultimately caused grandpa to die, I sort of freaked out when Josiah got sick.  We don't use antibiotics so it was a very big battle of not freaking out so much and running to the doctor but also having wisdom to do what was best for our child.  We prayed, we asked for prayer, we used our charcoal and silver and we waited.  Praise God, it was mild and only lasted 24 hours with one night of no sleep.  Thursday we tried to catch up for a missed day of action and get the house cleaned and ready for the homestudy and by Friday I don't think I realized how emotionally drained I was until the minute the licensor walked out the door.
I'll give you the highlights of what she focused on for our family.  We were grilled extensively about being Christians.  Kim, our licensor, told us that we could be atheists and teach children all the horrors of the world and the state would not care but because we are Christians we needed to be interrogated about not pushing our religion on children.  I find this rather amusing in many ways because I think anyone who is a true follower of Christ realizes that you cannot force someone to become a Christian.  We had to agree that we would not make a child go to church with us and that we would not PUSH our religion on them.
The second issue was our homeschooling.  Honestly, I do not think that this is a state issue but rather that Kim spent her career as a teacher and then principal and has only been with CPS for the last four years.  I think that our homeschooling is a personal issue for her.  She has a lot of concerns that as my children's parent, I just do not share.  I know my children's personalities better than anyone else ever will and the things she was concerned about just do not apply in our family.  I know she has concerns because she brings it up at every meeting we have had with her.  This time she said that the social workers may not want to place children with us who have feeding tubes because it would be too hard for me to take a 10-15 minute break to feed the child every couple of hours while I am homeschooling.  She clearly does not understand that I do in fact have the freedom to take a 10-15 minute break every two hours because I do homeschooling.
The third issue came when she asked Josiah how he is disciplined and he said that we spank.  Her eyes bugged out of her head and that sparked a long conversation.  She tried to tell me that I did not have the right to discipline my child biblically by saying that it was reportable by anyone working in the school system.  I told her that my understanding of the WACs (which is just the laws in writing) said that I did have the right to discipline my children this way.  I said that we would not discipline a foster child in this manner and that we understood the reasoning for that and it makes sense to us when children are coming from abusive homes.  She made a few comments about how it is not a good way to discipline by hurting your children.  I was really worried about this conversation because I thought there was a chance she might report us after all that she said.  Joel and I talked through the entire conversation later and we are thankful that it came out at the beginning (even though it was a little scary at the time) because we know that we are well within the law both with the government and with the Lord.  Now it is out in the open and she is still licensing us and in some ways I think it was good to establish that we are our biological children's parents and we understand our rights as such.
The last issue was in regards to race.  We had put on our paperwork that we are open to adding any race to our family.  We had no stipulations in regards to the issue.  Our plan for our entire marriage was to adopt from Africa until last year we found out that they will not let me due to my diabetes.  So, obviously, if we were planning on children from Africa, they were going to be black.  90% of the kids coming into foster care are either black or mixed race.  She was concerned about this because we were both raised in a small town that was predominantly white.  I felt like she was beating around the bush so I finally said "you mean because our high school had only two black kids?"  And she said that was the token problem.  We both tried explaining that just because we were raised in a somewhat racist community, did not make us racist in any way, shape or form.  She wanted an accounting of the black friends that we currently have.  We don't have any black friends (our kids do however) but that is not because we have a problem with black friends!  This whole topic made me rather furious because I'm the kid who my entire life was so careful to not be associated with racist people, who has gone to great lengths to make sure that my children don't see color when they look at other children because I know that there is still so much racism in our world.  Since I was a teenager the pictures in my mind of my future family were always bi-racial.  This topic was my least concern of doing foster care and yet it seemed to be one of her biggest concerns.  I am really hoping that she does not hold against us where we were raised because she will be wasting a loving home.
After two hours of this sort of questioning and coming off the week we had just experienced it took a long cry for me to be able to work through all my emotions.  Saturday when I woke up, I started taking account of the things I was thankful for in this situation.  At that point my perspective of the homestudy completely changed.  I no longer dreaded what had been said at the interview but rather put control back in God's hands.
We have our final homestudy this Wednesday and all we are waiting on after that is for our background checks to come back (which should happen any time).  Then we can be licensed and placed with some children.  Even though Joel and I are both open to adding more boys to our family Kim has made many comments about us needing girls because we have three boys.  We have a feeling she may hold out to place us with girls.  At this point we have made it clear that we would welcome more sons but we feel like this too needs to be left to God and He can work it out with her however He wants.  One prayer request that we have for Wednesday is that Kim will decide how many children she will license us for taking.  She has said that she thinks two is enough but we can legally be licensed for three and feel like it would be easier to just get licensed for three up front than have to go back and get licensed for one more down the road.  We are just praying that God would change her heart if He wants us to be licensed for three.  We did go buy a third bed in faith, so we'll see how it goes.
We are also praying about the background checks coming back quickly and being processed.  The woman whose job it is to process them is a lifelong smoker and currently on an oxygen tank and only in the office part time.  The state had no one else trained to process background checks, so they are hastily trying to train up another person but it has backlogged the entire process.  We have absolutely nothing on our record which is supposed to help speed things up.
Thank you so much for your support and continued prayers.  We are eagerly awaiting the completion of the licensing procedure and to welcome more children!!