Ticking a box can change your life forever

The LA information session went incredibly well - both MB and I walked out excited, uplifted and happy with this path that we have chosen. Then we opened the 'Expression of Interest Form' and were faced with a few little decisions...

will you consider a child from the following backgrounds:

• with remedial (fixable) medical problems
• who is premature
• who has Hep B or C or has the antibodies
• with parental drug history
• with parental background of alcoholism
• with parental background of intellectual disability
• with parental background of psychiatric illness

How do you decide... to tick the 'yes' box and possibly commit your lives to caring for a severely disabled child... to tick 'no' and tick yourself into a corner where no child is good enough for you. There are a couple of boxes that MB and I both agreed would be a 'yes' and a couple that one of us wanted as 'yes' and the other 'no', so those will be a 'no', but there are a few that will require research, advice from those wiser than we are, and lots and lots of prayer.

We don't want a 'perfect' child and I feel called to help those less fortunate, but we also have to consider ourselves and what we can withstand and cope with. We need to be able to tick the 'yes' box knowing that we can cope with, love and support the child we get, that we can provide them with all that they would need and all that their birth parents want them to have. I know there is an element of fate in these things - that we could pick up our 'perfect' baby only to be in a car accident and end up with a quadriplegic. That sometime you can't know or choose what you're getting into, but when you are offered that choice it's a difficult one to make.