Use An Adoption Consultant? Are you nuts?

When we first started looking into domestic adoption, I emailed back and forth quite a bit with a friends who had used an adoption consultant to help them as they adopted their daughter.  I remember quite vividly saying to Josh, "I just don't get it. Why would you pay extra money in what's already a super expensive process to use an adoption consultant?  Doesn't that sound kind of dumb?"  It really didn't make any sense to me.


But as time went on, we needed someone to answer about a billion questions that we had about domestic adoption.  I didn't want someone's opinion.  I didn't want someone who just wanted me to hire them.  I didn't want some random info off of the internet.  I wanted someone to talk to that actually knew what they were talking about!  I wanted someone that would care about us as individuals and not just tell us to do domestic, but to help us as we thought through what God was calling us to.  Enter, Tracie Loux our adoption consultant.

(This is Tracie, her husband, and their children)

Tracie is the consultant that had helped our friends adopt their daughter.  I figured it wouldn't hurt for me to shoot her an email.  I remember it like it was yesterday.  It was 9:30pm on a Saturday night, and questions were just weighing heavily on my mind and heart.  I emailed Tracie and she responded within an hour (an extremely RARE thing in the adoption world), answering all my questions, sharing helpful thoughts and saying she'd love to talk with me on Monday.  I was blown away by her care, her promptness in responding, and her desire to help.  


After two months of emailing back and forth with Tracie, talking with friends and family, praying, and talking a lot with each other, Josh and I began to get some clarity about where God was directing us.  We knew that He was leading us to pursue domestic adoption and we absolutely knew that we didn't want to enter the process without Tracie's help. So what changed?  Why don't I think it's a dumb idea anymore to use an adoption consultant? More on that tomorrow!