Complete Joy

God is so good. When we pray, He listens. When we ask Him to speak, He does. He is faithful.

We received the updated special focus list from our agency this weekend. We spent the day yesterday looking through it and as we stopped and read each story, we couldn't shake the feeling that we were somehow "cheating" on our child. It honest to goodness felt like we were setting one of our children aside and trying to find someone else to replace him. It felt horrible.

We spent Sunday morning in fellowship with our friends, like we do every Sunday. We spent the morning praying together over our decision and what it would mean for us and for our future child. One of our friends told us that it seemed like we needed to decide which was more important to us, our life, our job, and our call here in rural Asia or our love and our call to this little boy. Justin and I decided yesterday afternoon that we were done fighting this feeling. Maybe what we had been seeing as a closed door, wasn't a closed door. We decided to allow ourselves a little more time of opening our hearts here. We had spent the last week trying to shut him out of our hearts, but it wasn't working. So we began to talk about what a decision like this would mean for our family. We had come into this journey planning that we would add a member to our family and live life like we had been living. A new life of course, with its own challenges and chaos, but for the most part, no major changes, for example the location of our home. We ended up coming up with a couple of plans, let's call them Plan B, Plan C and Plan D. We figured it couldn't hurt to have enough to make it to Plan Z, right?

This morning, I woke up and decided to do some research. I began looking up information about expats living overseas with children that have special needs and I found some encouragement. I decided to write an email to our good friends who have a huge passion for our job and also a huge passion for adoption. I shared with them our struggles and our confusion and asked them how do you decide between one or the other? They replied back and encouraged us to truly seek the Lord and His heart and to trust as He leads. We know that we are in this town, today, for a purpose. And we need to fulfill that purpose well with our whole hearts. We also know that we are called to adopt, and we also need to fulfill that calling with our whole hearts. And we will worry about what tomorrow brings when we get there and trust God to do the leading.

So this afternoon, as I poured over the Scriptures, asking God to speak to me specifically today, He answered me. I went through many verses in Psalm that proclaim the importance of trusting in Him, our Rock and our Deliverer. And then I ended up in John 15. Such familiar verses to so many of us, especially in our lives for the past 2 years. A theme in our company has been Abide. And I was reminded once again of the importance of abiding in Him and allowing Him to direct our paths. But for some reason today, John 15:11 stuck out to me, and I wasn't quite sure why, but I knew that it was something God was impressing on me. "I have written this, so that your joy may be complete." I opened my devotional that I have been reading through and flipped it to August 15, the day that Qi Long was found. And guess what verse was listed for that day. Yes, John 15:11. Not the whole passage, but just this one verse. And then this is what I read off to the side. "Joy is the experience of knowing you are unconditionally loved." A quote by Henry Nouwen. What more could God want a child of his to know on one of the hardest days of his life? That he was unconditionally loved.

We sent an email to our case worker tonight and told her that we were ready to take the next steps to make Qi Long a part of our family. We don't know where this next year will lead us. He could have medical issues that take us away from our job, he could not. All we know is that he is already so unconditionally loved by us, but more than any one, by his Heavenly Father, who lavishly fills my heart with confirmation in the little details!

Worth It

We heard back from the orphanage and they are standing by what is in his files. They are saying that he does not have what our pediatricians are saying that he has and all he needs is some personal love and attention and that his medical delays will resolve on their own. We also received a video of him which, honestly ripped my heart in two. It's one thing looking at a picture and another thing watching a video of a child playing and being a real human kid. A real human kid that doesn't have a mama or a daddy, or two brothers and a dog. He doesn't have anybody that is there for him no matter what. He no doubt has people that care about him and care for him, but it's not permanent. They go home and change shifts and his life is one big ball of who is coming next? But even though they are confident of this, it is still very hard for us to let go of what makes the most sense. Our agency encouraged us that you don't normally find such drastic differences in the files vs. doctors. But we all know that it happens. Are they lying, do they just not know, do they not have the resources to know truly what is going on with him? Or is it really what they say and it's just all a big coincidence that all of his symptoms point to this? Our realism says, "There is no way he doesn't have this. 2+2 always equals 4, no matter how you turn it. But our hopefulness says, "There's so much we don't know."

It's Sunday. Tuesday will be 3 weeks since we first saw him. Today is 2 weeks since we opened our hearts to the idea that he could actually be our son. And as of today we have spent 1 week trying to let him go. This is not a natural process of the heart. At all. But neither was my own adoption.

It wasn't natural for God the Father to send His own Son into the world to grow up only to die, in order for me to be adopted into His family. It wasn't natural to watch his Son grow up into a beautiful young man whose very breath was only used to bring glory to His Father, just to watch him suffer in agony and pain. None of that was natural, and yet it was worth it. God saw that I was worth it. And I know that no matter what happens on this journey, no matter how painful it is on the way there, in the end, whoever our son or daughter is, it will be worth it.

I am praying these words over this sweet little boy today. "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jer. 29:11

Letting Go

This has been a really, really, really hard week. We haven't been through these kind of emotions in a very long time and they aren't very fun. We were on our way back home Monday and opened our email to find the responses we had been waiting for from our pediatrician. We also received a response from another doctor friend. Both of them shared their opinions on Qi Long's condition, which unfortunately revealed issues what we *thought* were in the clear.

Without going too much into detail, both of our pediatricians feel like he has some serious issues that we were not seeing. A couple of them, his file clearly stated that he did not have. But after hearing from the doctors, all of the signs add up and all of the signals are pointing to the fact that he does.

Going into this process, Justin and I both felt like we would be very open to many special needs that we have seen listed. But the more we thought about it and thought about our job and our family, we realized that as much as we want to, we just simply can't do some of the things that we normally could. First of all, we live in a very small town in East Asia and our medical care is not great. So anything that might potentially need emergency assistance is pretty much out of the question. Of course accidents can and will happen, just as with any kid, but when you know for a fact you are dealing with life and death, it's just not a possibility for us right now.

This diagnosis is literally rocking our world. We have to give our decision on whether we want to keep his file for good, or let it go back into the list for other families to view. And at this point we are really struggling to find our answer. Yesterday, we were all in, and today we have no idea what to do. They never tell you how hard it is to have to think about saying no to a child here. No one tells you about how quickly your heart can become attached to a picture. We all look at pictures of orphans and feel pity, but no one tells you about the grief that you go through in actually considering one of these precious children to be your own. Or maybe they did, and I just didn't listen.

At this point, we aren't quite ready to let go, but we can't say yes yet. There is still a strange small hope that it's not what it seems. But, we are letting his file go back to the list and are begging God to show us what to do. We know that if we aren't the family that was meant to bring him home, that we have to trust God to bring him the right family.

In the meantime, we are still going to send our questions to the orphanage and see what they say and just pray for guidance.

I think I'm in.

Today was the day. Sunday. We were headed out to try and get more information in order to make one of the most important decisions we have ever had to make. As we were riding in the taxi on the way, all of us were abnormally quiet. We realized later that we were all just nervous. None of us knew what to expect or what not to expect. We really were just jumping into the wind on this one. Our stomachs were in knots at the possibility of getting to see a little boy that could possibly be in our family. Scared that they would say no, but at the same time, scared that they might say yes. We so desperately wanted to know more about him, yet were so fearful of what we might find out. Could anything change what we were already feeling about this boy? And then here we were, standing on one side of a gate and he was on the other side. We could hear children playing, and we wondered if one of those laughs were from him.

The good news is that we went to the orphanage and we met one of the directors. He was super nice and seemed genuinely willing to help us. But the fact was that he couldn't just let us in. He seemed to know our boy right away when we said his name and he smiled. He said that his caretaker wasn't there that day, because it was the weekend and if we could come back the next day that he could possibly try to help us a little more and we could at least meet her and talk to her. But we weren't able to come back the next day. We had previous engagements that couldn't be changed. He gave us a lady's number and told us to call her and she could maybe help us. We told him thank you for his time and that we hoped to see more of him in the future and he smiled, shook our hands and said "I hope so too."

We spent the next little while walking around outside of the orphanage, praying not only for wisdom, discernment and guidance for our future, but also for Qi Long's future, with or without us, as well as the future of all of the other little boys and girls that live there. We prayed for the caretakers, for the people that give of themselves every day. They pour out their time, their love and their hearts to these kids and provide them with as much as they can give.

As we walked down the hill, Justin and I both looked at each other. He asked me how I was feeling, and I said, "I think I'm in." He said he was too. We looked at Stephen and ask him what he was thinking. And he said, "I'm in, too." We decided right there, standing outside of his orphanage that we were going to take a leap of faith and trust God to do the rest. We prayed and told God that we trusted him with all of our futures and that we trusted Him to close doors that needed to be closed or to open doors that needed to be opened, and to help us to know the difference. And the rest of the afternoon as we walked around the area, we looked at the face of every child we saw, praying that one of them just maybe, might have been his.

So here we are, we still don't know anything more about him, but we know that as far as we are concerned, we are all in.

We Just Have to Try

It's Friday night. We locked in Qi Long's file on Tuesday. (Technically, Monday, but wouldn't you know that our case worker is on vacation this week, so she didn't get the email right away.) She told us to let her know any questions that we had and she would ask the orphanage to clarify and that she would request a video for us. We contacted anyone that we knew that had any kind of connection with a pediatrician. We are recommended to have a pediatrician picked out for this very purpose, so that when you receive a referral and have a time limit, you can quickly get advice. Well, we didn't think we would be on this step yet, so we didn't have a doctor lined up. So we have been grasping for straws. I found out that the pediatrician we have used since Stephen was born is no longer in our hometown. I had to do some stalking, but I finally found him in a far away state and emailed his office trying to get in touch with him. They responded back and said that he was out of town until Monday, but to go ahead and email him and he would get back to us then. Why does everyone have to be on vacation during one of the most important weeks of our lives?! We sent his files to a few other friends, hoping someone would be able to give us some encouragement, one way or the other. And now we wait.

Another thing that drew our attention to this little boy is the fact that he lives fairly close to us, the province next door to be exact. The train ride is only 4 hours to the city where he lives, which is VERY close considering it used to be a 12 hour overnight train ride. Thank you technology for the fast train. I so wish America would make bullet trains across the country! As we have sat at home this week, thinking about him and praying for him, we can't help but think that we are in a place where we could literally just go visit him. Most people don't even have that opportunity simply because they live in America and the child is in China. It's not economically or logistically possible for most. But we are here! We asked our case worker if she thought we could go visit him, and she said she thought that would be wonderful, but she would have to ask the orphanage.

Did I mention the fact that she is on vacation? It's been a few days since we heard from her and we have to make a decision by Tuesday. If you have known Justin and I for any amount of time, you know that we are pretty spontaneous when it comes to travel. (Having small children is trying to cure me of that, but not quite.) We have talked about it all day and we just decided to go buy train tickets tonight and we are going to go tomorrow. We need to do some medical checks anyway, so while we are there, we are going to go to the orphanage and just see what happens. At the end of the day, I can't just sit here being this close and not try. In 4 days, we will make a huge decision for our family and for this little boy and if we have the smallest, slightest possibility of a chance that we could even just catch a glimpse of him, we are going to try.

Justin and I both are very much here and now, follow our hearts personality types. Sometimes, we feel foolish. Sometimes we feel like we live in a completely fictional world where we are almost 30 and we have two kids. We still feel 18 years old most days. But in the end, we know that God gave us our passions for a reason, and we are going to do our best to funnel that passion into things that bring Him glory. And He will have to be the one to slow us down because life is too short to live in a state of should I stay or should I go. Our default will most likely always be to go, to do, to see, to hear, to feel and to try. We have failed an awful lot of times, but we try. And we believe that this little boy is worth it. We don't know what to expect. Most likely nothing will happen. Most likely the orphanage won't let us in and most likely we will come home not feeling much different than we do right now. But we are praying for Father to open doors for us this weekend. We are praying that He will give us some guidance, even if it's in a different way than we are looking for.

Really Too Fast

So, you remember a few days ago when I posted about that list we got in the email, and how we felt like it was just too soon to be going there, and those 3 faces that we saw? Well, 2 of those faces in particular began to plague our minds this week. We just couldn't get them out of our heads. It didn't help that Justin had put their pictures on his phone and was looking at them any chance he got. So we decided to go ahead and ask for their files last night. It's just information, right? Maybe if we can read more about them, it will help us to know why we are thinking of them so much.

There was this one little girl, 3 years old named Samantha and  this little boy named Jesse, also 3. These were the two kids that we were dying to know more about. But there was also this other little boy named, Wesley. He is 5 1/2 and the very first night we looked through all of the pictures, his big eyes caught both of our attentions and there was just something different about him, so we decided to ask for his file too.

We received them earlier this evening and spent the night pouring over the English translations of their files. We decided to read them separately so that we could process what we were seeing and see if our thoughts and feelings matched up when we were done. After a while, we both looked up and knew that the other had a special one in mind. I know I was praying for his to be the same as mine and I'm sure he was too. And it was. We were both falling head over heels for the one that we almost didn't ask for. Little Wesley had captured us. The other two were still heavy on our hearts, and Jesse even had a video in his file where his caretaker told him to say hi to "mama." If that doesn't rip your heart out I don't know what will. While one of the hardest parts of the adoption process (at least in the beginning) is saying no to one child, but yes to another, we didn't feel a connection with the two that we originally did. But when we looked at Wesley, there was something different. It was almost as if he was already ours.

Before we ever even thought we were close to the point of looking at the children, I had been praying and asking Father to give me very specific confirmations about the child that He had picked out for us. I've always felt bad for my pleading with Him to give me signs, and wondering why I don't ever just trust Him to lead my heart, but I also know that my heart is deceitful above all else and I have to guard it, because it is the epicenter of my life in Him. When I am asking Him for confirmations, it's not that I don't trust Him to speak to me, I just don't trust myself to listen. He knows that I am hard of hearing and He has always been faithful to give me what I need to be able to trust Him with all of my heart.

One of the things that just brought me to my knees was reading the date that Wesley was found. It was very close to a really big date for our family. Two very serious life changes, two different places, with different people...A time when our life and this little boy's life had both changed in ways that no one will ever be able to fully explain to us on this side of Heaven, but somehow, Father was weaving our lives together and I found out about it today.

There were a few other details that poured a little more concrete into my unsteady heart, one profound. Justin and I talked about this boy for what seemed like hours. And we were so shaken by it all. We were hoping that reading these files would help us to let go of these images and help us to focus on the task at hand, but this was exactly the opposite. And it was so fast! Mind you, we JUST received our home study packet (which we were blowing through, yay! but still!!) It just did not fit the timeline we had written for ourselves. We had the option of locking his file for one week while we sought the advice of doctors and any other wise counsel we could find. We had promised Stephen from the very beginning that his opinions mattered and that we wanted him to be a part of this process. So before we went any farther, we asked him for his opinion. We showed him Wesley's picture again and gave him a few details of his story and waited for his reply. Stephen shrugged his shoulders and said, "I'm cool with it." We looked at him and he looked at us and then a smile formed on his face. "What?" he asked. We said, "Really? You're cool with it?" And he said, "Yeah! I like him. Let's do it." Haha.

Now, for that to make sense, I have to include the fact that up until this point, Stephen was the least sold out person in our family. He was excited about adoption. He had been part of the conversation 5 years ago when he was only 4 or so. He has always been on board with giving another kid a family and he wants to be that big brother. But he hasn't been so sold out on the idea of a sibling from China. He worries about the language barrier, and we explain to him that just like we are learning Chinese here, our new child will learn English when they become part of our family. And we talk to Chinese people every day, even though we can't understand everything they say. We can almost always at least talk to the little kids! But something about having a Chinese speaking person as a member of our family has not made him very excited yet. Until tonight. Just in the carefree way that he said, "I'm cool with it," totally blew us away.

SO, with all of that being said, we sent an email saying that we were seriously considering Wesley, now we know his real name is Chen Qi Long, and we wanted to lock his file for the week so that we could continue to pray about him. So here's to finding out what God can show us within a week!

We Killed a Forest

We received our home study packet today! We received it all through email, but because I like checklists and to see paperwork with my own eyes to feel organized, I printed it all out. While I like to go in order of the checklist, Justin has started grabbing documents from here and there and making me scan them. We may do things differently, but we have the same end goal in mind, and for that I am so thankful for my husband. He has done more paperwork in this short month than I have ever seen him do and I am so proud of him. And after turning in our first few documents, I really don't care that we didn't go in order. We are getting it done. And that's what matters!

Also, as a side note, I have not drank any Coke in 10 days. Yep, I said 10 days. Our whole family has committed to fasting from coke and when we want to drink it, we take that moment to pray for our new kiddo. It really has been a joy.

 And I have also done my ab workout for 10 days straight. Ba-Bam!

Waste of Time

A couple of days ago, we received an email from the director of the China adoption program with our agency. We scheduled a Skype call with her to go over the specific process of China and she gave us a very good cliff-notes version of what to expect. She explained the difference between China's "Special Focus" list and their "Special Needs" list. The Special Needs list contains children that have milder special needs and this is the list used to make referrals to families once they have submitted their Dossier to China and have received their Log in Date. Most families will be matched to a child through this list and this is the process we are most familiar with based on our reading. The Special Focus list, however, is a list of children that have more moderate to severe special needs, have been on the Special Needs list for more than 2 months, or are in the older child category (over the age of 4.) and you can be matched with a child no matter where you are in the process. She told us that she had added our email to the monthly special focus list and this was really a surprise to us. We had been anticipating the time that we would be able to begin looking at waiting children, but we didn't expect it to be so soon. We got off of the Skype call and Justin was immediately checking the email. I was a little hesitant, just because it was so early and looking at pictures of kids that were waiting, somehow made it all seem so much more real. We have officially begun the adoption process and according to this lady, there is a chance we could see our future child when we open this email. I told Justin it was a waste of time. It was just too early. We hadn't even paid the money for our home study yet. We should wait until after our home study was done to begin looking at that list. In the end, we looked. And there were faces. 3 of them to be exact. And each of us have our favorites. But we ended the night tonight agreeing that at this point in time, this list is available to us so that we can pray. Pray for our process, pray for all of these children, and pray for our future child, whoever he or she is.