My gift

Yesterday morning I read this from A Holy Experience.  That’s the name of Ann Voskamp’s blog that is emailed to me almost daily. 

“You don’t get to make up most of your story.  You get to make peace with it.  You don’t get to demand your life, like a given.  You get to accept your life, like a gift.”

That about sums up what I’m trying to learn huh?  I’m doing a pretty poor job of accepting and making peace.  If the lot I’ve been handed lately is a gift, it’s more like a scratchy, ugly knitted sweater that doesn’t fit right, rather than the “how do you know me so well?”-“this is beautiful!”-“it fits me perfectly”-“I love it” kind of gift.  The former gift is annoying.  You’re supposed to be thankful, but you know you’ll never like it.  So you just fake a smile and say “thanks”.  But inside you say, “how could he think I’d like this?”  “What am I supposed to do with this?”  “Doesn’t he know me better than this?”  The problem is that I truly believe Ann’s words are true.  So how do I look at the hand I’ve been dealt and call it perfect and beautiful and trust that He knows me fully in giving me this gift?  I don’t know.  I just don’t know.

(Here I stopped and cried.  But then I sat and thought some more and wrote this…)

I guess I don’t have to be thankful for the fact that we can’t adopt Bella.  I can be thankful I’ve known her.  I can be thankful for what God’s teaching me through all of this.  I can be thankful in the midst of it.  But I can also grieve.  I can be sad and frustrated.  A woman doesn’t have to be thankful that her husband died or that her son was diagnosed with cancer.  But she can choose to trust and be thankful in the midst of her grief and confusion and sadness.  Maybe that’s what it means to accept the gift and make peace with it.

She walks

Actually this was taken about a month ago.  She is beginning to run all over our house and is more and more steady each day.  Does this make her a toddler now?

Our Christmas cutie!

We just celebrated...

a birthday!

Since Bella loves playing with her duckies during bath time, we decided to do a ducky-themed birthday party.  "Duck" was also one of her first words which she doesn't really say, but rather prefers to yell.

We had snacks.

We made a "pond" in our living room, which Bella and the other little guests absolutely loved.

We let her try her chocolate cake, but she wasn't super interested.  Therefore, she didn't get as messy as I'd hoped.  

This day was a quackin' good time!

December pictures

I had a late night and she had an early morning.  This little nap after her first bottle was such a gift!

Making her laugh is something we both LOVE to do!  Even though you can't see it, she's giggling.

Likely our only Christmas with her, we're living it up...and documenting everything.  :)

Trusting in His Timing

It’s a theme of ours really.  Our timing is NOT God’s timing.  To us, He seems to moving way too slowly.  We’re exhausted and we’re ready to have our daughters, our permanent, legal children in our arms and to move forward with our lives.  We don’t know how the next six months will unfold, but here are a few things we’re muddling over lately…

1.        Bella has yet to be matched with a family.  We’re not exactly sure why.  It’s possible that it takes a while for all the documents to be translated into English to be sent to a family.  The government will let the orphanage know when she’s been matched and then they’ll let us know.  We have no idea when this could be.  Weeks?  Months?  Half a year?  Only He knows.
2.       We had to say no to our last referral.  So this means again we are waiting to discover who our children will be, waiting to be matched with the ones we’ll adopt.  Only He knows who these precious ones will be.
3.       The timing of how one and two will collide is just in His hands.  It’s possible we’ll adopt our children first.  Just one of them?  Both of them?  Only He knows.  It’s possible we’ll be able to bring them back here for a time and we’ll be parenting three.  It’s possible we’ll need to head back to the States with them before Bella’s future family comes.  And then what?  She needs to stay here.  Where will she go?  It’s possible she’ll be matched first and then we’ll have an empty home again for a time.  There’s just so much we don’t know.  Only He knows.

For someone who likes decisions, likes closure, likes to be in control, all of this is an extremely uncomfortable position to be in.  Yet I know it is good for my soul.  Trusting in the One who holds me and my future, and holds all these babies and their futures in the palm of His loving hands…that’s right where I need to be.

pressing on in hope

a view from a park in our city

While we are trying to cherish every day with our little Bella, the truth is, we will not be adopting her.  We will be adopting other children.  We’re in the midst of figuring out who these other children are, and it’s an agonizing process.

I’m not sure how it works in other countries, but let me share a bit about how the referral/matching process happens in Chinese adoptions of children with special needs.

At the magical time when we’ve completed enough paperwork (usually it’s close to the time our dossier gets to China), we start receiving referrals from our agency.  A referral means that a child’s file has been pulled off of these general lists by our agency.  No other agency or family can now choose this child.  The agency sends the file to us.  The file includes a few pictures and medical information and a very general summary of the child’s development and daily life.

When we receive this file we are given about 36 hours to think, pray, do research on this child’s condition, contact doctors and other specialists for their opinions and make a decision.  If we say yes, there is paperwork to gather and a written statement about why we want to adopt this child and our plan for her care.  If we say no, her file goes back to our agency and then to another family or back to that general list altogether. 

We have received three referrals.  We’ve had to say “no” twice.  We remind ourselves that doesn’t mean these two sweeties spend the rest of their days in the orphanage.  It just means we’re not the right forever family for them, someone else is.  Because we live in a place that is rather remote, medical care here is limited.  We want what is best for these children and for them to receive the best possible care.  We’ve had to acknowledge that our home may not be what is best.  Therefore, we need to adopt children with minor, correctable special needs.  Making a decision about what is minor and correctable is not as easy as it sounds.  We have agonized over each referral.

Currently, we’ve said a tentative yes.  We need more information to make our decision.  And the information is coming VERY slowly.  The file we were sent was very outdated, nine months has passed since the medical information they sent us.  So, we are anxiously awaiting current information.  We’ve been waiting almost a month. 

Pray that we get more information in the next couple days.  And pray that we are able to wholeheartedly say yes.  We really want to say yes.