Sunday, January 2, 2011

Here We Grow Again!!

I know, I know , I am a huge blog flunky! My last post was almost a month ago, but I promise I have a good excuse for neglecting my poor blog. In addition to the hurry and scurry of the holiday season, we have been busy working hard on bringing our boys home from China.

BOYS??!! Yes, I said boys! With an "s" ! Like more than one!! Yes, I'm officially announcing that this time next year, our family will have two more sweet blessings to share the holidays with. We are so excited!!

So, how did we go from adding one more kidlet to the crew to adding two? Well, I guess a little back story is in order here. We had let our agency know from the very beginning of our journey that we were interested in trying to bring home two little ones in the same trip. Our agency agreed to work with us on our efforts and we began discussing with them the type of special needs we would consider. We committed to Min Wu very quickly and then began to look at the files of a couple of little girls that we hoped would fit into our family. One of the little girls, Fu Mei, absolutely melted my heart and we requested her medical file so that we could determine whether or not we could adequately meet all of her needs. After receiving her file I began to research her condition on the web and realized very quickly that her needs were beyond our means of provision. My heart was broken. I cried as I called and told our case worker that we could not commit to Fu Mei. She asked if we would be interested in seeing more files. I really had to pause and consider her offer. I can't fully explain it, but there was a part of me that felt a real connection to this sweet little one that we had to say no to. I was not in a hurry to "replace" her spot in my heart. I declined the offer to view more files and hung up grieving over the reality that we just weren't the mommy and daddy that this precious little one needed. We were overjoyed to hear about a week later that she had been placed with another family and I rejoiced knowing that God had given her the gift of a forever family.

After some time I began to recover from the sadness and we began to talk again about looking at the files of some other little girls. At this point, something changed on our agencies side of things. They let us know that it was in their opinion that trying to bring home another child in addition to our Wu who has DS, was going to be too much when we already had two toddlers at home. We were disappointed at their decision, our social worker was disappointed, our children were disappointed, but we had no choice to accept it. That was early November.

We began to start putting the paperwork together for our impending home study. I have to say that I really had NO idea how much paperwork was involved with an adoption before we started our own. It really is an unbelievable amount and we haven't even started putting our dossier together yet!! CRAZY is the only word I can think of to explain how I felt trying to balance all of it with our already very full schedule. And even though busy can't even begin to explain the pace I was keeping with husband, children, home school, house and holidays, the idea that God still wanted us to try and bring home TWO children from China would not stop invading my thoughts.

So, although our agency had said no, I began to keep my eyes and heart open when visiting adoption advocacy sites. After reading many stories and seeing the beautiful faces of TOO many sweet children that were just waiting for their chance to belong to a family, I was determined to show our agency that we were capable of bringing home more than one child. While visiting our agencies website one day, I saw the picture of an adorable six year old boy with a beautiful smile and sparkling brown eyes. I was smitten and quickly clicked to view his bio. It described him as helpful, thoughtful, articulate and bright. It also stated that his favorite subject in school was English, that he loved super heroes and that when he grew up he wanted to be a police officer (hey, I happen to have on of those! :). He reminded me so much of my Adam and I instantly recalled the numerous times that he had asked us to "please adopt a brother my age to play with". I was so excited about this little boy and the thought that maybe he was meant to be our son. I could barely contain my excitement! But, I still needed to tell Tim about him and then there was the whole agency issue to overcome. Well, of course, Tim was on board right away. Knowing that he was committed and confident about adding this sweet boy to our family gave me the courage that I needed to make the call to our case worker.

I nervously dialed the number to our agency. I can't remember our exact conversation, but I can tell you that she did not in anyway communicate anything at all positive in regards to our chances of her director approving us to adopt this boy. As I listened to her try to find "good and logical" reasons for why we probably wouldn't be approved to adopt two at once, a bit of doubt began to creep into my mind. "It's over", I thought. "They are for sure gonna say no." She let me know that she would get back with me later that day. I hung up sad and dejected. To tell you the truth, I wasn't just sad I was also mad! I went to find Tim and tell him about the frustrating conversation that I had with the agency and of course to cry on his shoulder a little bit. "How could they say no?" I thought. "How could they let this child possibly miss out on the opportunity to have a family?" "Everyone in the adoption world knows how hard it is to place boys, especially older boys, for no other reason other than they are boys!" It just didn't seem fair! Before I could throw a huge fit, God reminded me that if He was for us, then who could be against us? I sat on the couch with My Love to try and think of how to pass the rest of the day while patiently waiting for the agency to call us back with their decision. Not even five minutes had gone by when we got the call from our caseworker letting us know that they had decided to approve our family to adopt another boy in addition to our sweet little Min Wu!! We were sent the file of the little boy I had seen online and learned that his name was Ke Xin, born June 15, 2004. We immediatly began the paperwork to start the process to bring him home. Within a couple of days we had submitted our pre-approval paperwork to our agency and they in turn sent our paperwork off to China. We were delighted to receive a call two days before Christmas letting us know that we had received pre-approval from China to adopt Ke Xin!!

So, here we grow again!!! I'm tellin' ya, our God is SO good!!!!



Ke Xin

In His Grip,

1 comment:

  1. I can hardly wait to meet my new nephews ~ I already love you! ~ mmmmmmmmmmwwwwwaaaaahhhhhh ~
    Luv Aunt Poodie

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