Good News from China

February was one of the craziest months ever.

My head has been spinning, I can barely catch my breath and I regularly feel panic trying to take over that I have to fight down.

Some of it is the start of baseball season, some of it is our daughters birthday.  Some of it’s our sons baptism (!!!) and all the family coming in town to celebrate.  Some it has been an incredible trip to Austin for the IF: gathering, and then another one to Dallas for adoption training.

And some of it has been this girl…

Mid January found me heartbroken and at the lowest point I’d been in the adoption process.  We had gone through two files of little girls we thought could potentially be ours that ended up not working out for different reasons.  One I had gotten particularly attached to.  We had even sought out doctors opinions and connected with people who had adopted from her orphanage.  Her medical needs were already REALLY intense, and the doctor appointment informed us of a whole other special need she had which we just couldn’t handle.  Not to mention our three kiddos would be a health risk for her due to being immunocompromised.

My heart was aching, and I didn’t want to look at any more files.  However we were also getting news that the wait with our agency was going to be much longer than we had been given the impression it would be.  Between that and some other issues we were not feeling at ease with just sticking with them through the whole process.  We didn’t feel like either situation had much hope in the moment so we were just praying really hard that God would direct us which path He wanted us to walk.

At the same time I was reminding Him of the prayers that I had been praying for awhile.  That I would love to know who our girl was before February.  That there was this sweet spot of time right after school got out that I REALLY wanted to travel in.  I had been praying for those specific things for a couple of months.  But now we seemed no where close to those possibilities and did not know how to proceed.  We felt pretty hopeless.

BUT GOD.

We had been praying hard for a week that God would give us clarity on which path to walk (back on advocacy sites looking at files, or waiting on our agency).  And sometimes He makes a new path.

On January 15 I got an email.  One of the files we had previously viewed (which has it’s own amazing story I can’t wait to share) was with a different agency, and after discussing the file and expressing an openness to view future files the agency had unbeknownst to us added us to their newsletter.  The newsletter introduces kiddos who are not matched and still need families.  As soon as I opened it I saw a super sweet face and steadied my heart. As I read on my heart beat faster…age 2, complex CHD, girl…check, check and check.  Girls are a hot commodity right now, and I thought for sure there would be several other families waiting for her.  So I emailed immediately with low expectations.

By the end of the day Friday I received the news that she did NOT have any families waiting on her right now, and I was able to receive her file.  All 18 pages of it.  I immediately emailed it over to our doctor, again trying not to get my hopes up and preparing myself for the worst. Of course that weekend just happened to be a holiday weekend, so I spent three days trying to ignore that file so as not to get attached.  By the end of the weekend though, her file was highlighted and had notes and questions all over it.  I knew exactly where her orphanage was on a map.  (side note: I have been drawn to the city of Shanghai since the start of this process, and I don’t know why.  The fact that she was smack dab in the middle of the city seemed a bit *coincidental*)

FINALLY on January 20, I heard back from our doctor.  We had a long chat about her medical needs, what they would entail, how it would impact our family (she’s been seeing us almost 8 years now), etc.  Her exact words at the end of the conversation (after poo-pooing several other files we had shown her) were “this ones worth fighting for”.

So we decided to do just that.  Her file was with another agency, which would mean we would have to transfer agencies.  Which wasn’t an issue since we were pretty peeved with ours at the moment.  HOWEVER.  When you transfer an agency, you loose a LOT of money.  And we had already lost a lot of money because we transferred to the China program.  So that was a big decision we had to pray through.  Over and over though, we felt God confirming that this was our girl and that He would provide, so on January 21 we submitted LOI (letter of intent) to adopt our girl.

Our new agency (Gladney), matches with a committee, meaning you have to be approved by a group of people before they decide you are officially matched with the child.  This made us a bit anxious, because we have had other families come in at the last minute with that agency who get first priority basically knocking us out of line.  But again, we were trusting God.  We submitted LOI on a Thursday afternoon, and they typically only do matching meetings on Thursday mornings.  Sigh, more time for waiting.  Thursday evening a call was placed to the other family potentially interested in our girl, and they backed out!  Hooray!!!!  Since we were now the only family interested we no longer had to go through the committee, just be supervisor approved, which we were on January 22!  A huge step 1 complete!

The transfer process kind of sucks, because in a lot of ways it’s like starting over.  We had to fill out a ton of paperwork, get notaries again, go to the FedEx store again, scan all the things, etc.  And tell our old agency we were transferring and tell them all the reasons…I hate confrontation.  BUT we finished it all in record time and got our transfer paperwork to China just before they shut down for Chinese New Year.

We got the call yesterday that everything had been FINALLY transferred, and that we officially have PA (pre-approval)!  A LONG 5 week wait.  The next step is to get LSC (letter seeking confirmation) which is basically China’s confirmation that she’s ours.  Both China and our agency caution sharing pictures before LSC, and we want to heed their guidance, so we will refrain for now.  Although if you see us in person we will gladly brag on our girl!

While we can’t blast the interwebs with pictures of our sweet girl yet, we wanted to share this exciting news with everyone who has been with us in this process for almost 2 years
now!  It has been a LONG wait, but from here things are going to move FAST.  Everything points to traveling in early June, although we will have a more official timeline once we get LSC (another 30-55 days).

I can’t help but laugh as I look at how it’s all played out.  We knew who our girl was before February.  We will be traveling right in that sweet spot we prayed for.  All the things God had laid on our heart from the onset (CHD, Shanghai, etc) make sense now that we have our girl.  We can’t help but see answered prayers and the hand of God as we near the completion of this arduous process.  Thank you for walking with us in this journey, it’s been quite the ride and the best is yet to come!

P.S. If you missed the last post, be sure to read it as it gives more info on our girls medical condition