Paperwork Is Done!

Ugh.

Not just the length, but the content. Consider questions like:

Describe your personality; include what you view as your strengths and weaknesses. Briefly explain the events and experiences in your life that you feel shaped your personality.

and

What was it like to be a child in your family? What type of activities did your family do together? What were your mother’s strengths? Her weaknesses? Your father’s strengths? His weaknesses? Did you like the way that you were parented? How did your parents discipline you and your siblings? What aspects of parenting do you hope to emulate and what will you avoid?

There seemed to be hundreds of questions like these, each with 4 lines underneath to provide your answers. I'd need several pages to answer truthfully just one of the component questions like the ones above. Four lines? For all those?

Which leads me to believe that they can't be looking for complete or truthful answers. They must have some sort of platitude filter that allows them to spot potential evil folk without any serious answer content.

Perhaps it's the exercise itself. Making it through these questions and providing half-meaningful answers to them shows that you have the patience to finish a tedious task and the ability to muddle through childish modes of thinking and communication.

So, the classes are done (sorry about not posting on the last two meetings; we actually worked on our paperwork during most of them), and the application forms are done. Now there's just a drug test ("Ha!" my wife laughs whenever I complain about getting my drug test. "You're only in trouble if they've outlawed caffeine, or if playing WoW instead of doing paperwork leaves some sort of residue.") and a physical.

I'm moderatly worried about the physical, mostly because I'm worried that they'll find something new. "Hey look! That's a new tumor, right?"

Once those are done, we can turn the first corner on this particular Monopoly board. Paperwork done, there only remains:

• Home studies - where someone from DFACS or BCS comes to our house, looks around, and asks us the same awful questions we answered in our application.
• "Picking" a child or children - just as gut-wrenching as it sounds, from what I hear.
• Placement - Hey, why don't you come live with us for 6 months and we'll "try each other on," all the while pretending that we don't desperately want this fake situation to end so that we can begin the painful yet wonderful task of building a family. And we can let our ulcers nurse us to sleep each night, each with the fear that we've done some little, unknown thing to screw the whole situation up for everyone. Mmm. Good times ahead.
• Finalization - After, and if, we've survived the 6 months relatively intact, we get to begin the wondrous (and certainly brief, right?) process of making it all legally binding. Woohoo! More Limbo!

Bah. Philippians 3:12-14
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

More postings as events warrant.