Until the original adoptive parents began to fear someone was going to call the state on them. They then began to discuss bringing S back into their home NOT to reconcile their family or because they realized they were wrong to treat a child like trash, but to avoid a state investigation. At that point, many someones felt compelled to call the state and report the situation rather than allow this child to be lost into the nightmare from whence he had come out.
At some point in the story, someone let this teen understand that HIS voice is the one that counts. The state declined to open a formal case on this child, provided the original adoptive parents make a permenant placement him that was not in their own home. They were forbidden to return him to their home ever again, or he would formally be removed for fostercare, along with the biological children in the home they dearly wanted to protect because they felt they were *different* than this child.
S got up one day last week and declared that if he got to have a say in his future, then he was demanding he come back to us and be adopted by us. So, the state, the family he was residing with, and a lot of support characters worked to halt a train and let him get off at the stop he choose for himself.
S is home. This time, he will stay permenantly. He asked us to adopt him. He wants to be a part of this family. Ordinarily, I would encourage a teen of his age to consider a permenant guardianship instead of starting an entirely new adoption. However, the first adoption of S was bungled badly and it puts this child at legal risk. The only way to correct those issues is for someone to re-adopt him. It could be the first adoptive family, but they are not ever going to do this. They deliberately bundled the adoption in the first place on him. The only other alternative is for someone else to adopt him before his 18th birthday and permenantly fix the mess they made of his status and legal situation. Thus, adoption we will pursue for his sake and upon his request. We have six months before we can do that process. For now, we have legal custody and legal guardianship. They are both informal at this moment in time. We have the necessary paperwork and instructions to make it formal through the courts. However, we are delaying in that step in the hopes we can convince the first adoptive parents to cooperate in the far more important need for them to formally relinquish him for adoption to us. They have sort of done this, but it is not in a form legally accepted in our state.
Now was NOT the time for another adoption. It was not the time to add a very hungry and hurting teenager into our home. It was most definitely not the time to find funds for a lawyer and homestudy that we don't have in the least right now. However, when a child knocks at your door and begs you to help them, you don't turn that child down. You don't tell a child for whom you *do* have the talents and resources to help, that you cannot be bothered by the inconvenience they bring to your life. Instead, you rejoice at the beauty and blessing of this child and you open your hearts and your home to this child.
S is an exile of the Quiverful, Patriachal cult as much as we are. His damage and pain is much deeper than ours. We were the adults. We protected our children and when we realized the damage being done to us, we got ourselves out. S had no one to protect him. The adults who swore to protect him hurt him instead. So, now we help another exile to heal.
This is how we roll. This is the gift God has given me. Now, the funds to pay for this, yeah, we won't have that until September or October, but we'll trust that it will come. This one final child to the tribe will not be turned away over the lack of funds. The life of a hurting child is worth far, far more than the funds we must safe and scrap to pay for the lawyer and homestudy it will require to permenantly protect him from the past he hsa finally escaped.
And I witness yet another miracle in your life. :happytears
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