I knew that I wanted to adoption a little girl from China in my teens. Why, you may ask. I have no idea other than that God put it there because there was no doubt that this was my dream.
Fast forward to my boyfriend.. I, of course, (because I blah blah blah about all things) told him of my dreams but we never took them seriously because we were super young (like babes) and in love. We got married, I just turned 19 and he 21. We will talk again in 10 years we said. Silly kids, we were, buying purple carpet and the whole works.
The dream never completely disappeared..and one day Mr said, “we need a little girl from China!” So at 29.5 yrs old, (China requires both parents to be 30 to submit a dossier) I started the papers. Miles of papers and forms that I waded through.
4 yrs later, we are in China with Josie. Our dear beautiful perfect child that was my dream for my entire life was terrified of me. I reminded her of all of her caretakers that left her and she wasn’t going to trust me a inch. She was grieving beyond anything we could imagine and we sobbed with her. It was hardest thing that we had walked through as a couple. And it was going to either going to make us unbreakable or entirely break us. G became our backbone and continued to show us how to be faithful to Jesus and so gentle to both of us girls.
Gary, Josie and I were in a elevator in China after being in a hotel lobby where Little Miss had been running away and attaching herself to any given male. She was even caught digging in a stranger briefcase, sigh.
But back to the elevator story...The strangers (Caucasian) in the elevator asked, “ Are you adopting and how many children do you have?”
We firmly answered “One! And it will only be one! We will never do this again!”
This couple threw their heads back and laughed. “You WILL be back!!”
And we thought that they were out of their minds. Totally out of their minds. Amen.
Baba headed back to work, Mama went into some deep stuff as she settled in at home with a 3 yr old that was going through even deeper stuff. Surviving barely through the day and then grief came in stormy waves at night. Her sound of her grieving cries still haunt us.
We tried to cocoon (isolate) as a family for bonding and with that came a deep setting loneliness.
But through each day, joy did come! With each smile and laugh, the grief started to lighten. In every mile stone, every new thing! We were so over the moon and felt like our little tiny family was perfect. It was complete.
A year later, God obviously already working on our lives, we started wondering if Josie should have a sibling.
We can’t afford it was my excuse.
“You remember how hard it was” was G’s reasoning.
Another year slipped by..
Then we had the grief of losing a young friend, dear friend Jess, at a very young age.
All a sudden, life seemed disastrously short and made no sense at ALL! Jess was one that when she was talking to you that she made you feel like she could see into your soul and that you were the most important person in the world at that moment. She shined Jesus and loved so well.
Is it better to not love and then be spared the pain of loss
or...
to love so much that even in the middle of the heart crushing pain of loss to still feel blessed to have loved?
We came home from her services and both agreed that God was calling us to adopt again, to just laid down fear and to trust.
To some it may seem odd, like why now, but we had personally seen the strong bond of sibling and parent love.. so strong...that they would give anything and everything up just to have her back.
About two years later we were still waiting to be matched, Josie celebrated her 1/2 birthday at school. Apparently it was the best day ever.
That night at bedtime she prayed, “Dear Jesus, please bring Baby LuLu home by my real birthday”. I choked up. I wanted faith to believe that God could do that.
The next morning I was traveling to Janette’s after I dropped Josie off at school. I was going to sit with her through her surgery. It’s a hr drive and I was busy thinking about the verse that says “if you have faith like a mustard seed, and believe, you can say to that mountain “move” and it would move!” I tend to ask God gently for prayer requests because I do want to be in the center of His will.
But this morning I was bold. “Lord, you say that you can make mountains move and today would be a good day! Josie prayed for a miracle to happen by her birthday and You can make my phone ring today with a referral, and for this to happen, you need to get the paperwork right where it needs to be. And Lord, I’m NOT going to be surprised if my phone rings today and that it’s going to be AWAA (our agency). In fact, I’m going to figure on it ringing today. (But then I added.. “but, Lord, I will not be upset if it doesn’t, but I’m expecting it!”).
So Janette is in surgery and I’m settling in the waiting room counting down the hours watching it snow. I even had a notebook ready, just in case I needed to take notes.
And my phone RINGS and YUP, it’s area code 703. I would like to say that I wasn’t surprised, but I remember staring at the phone in disbelief.
Sure enough, it was Aimee (our family coordinator) and went on and on about blah blah blah. (My brain was spinning and wondering if she was just calling about some paperwork or needing updates, or renewals and that this was going to be some joke to my heart).
And then she finally said it ..We HAVE a referral for YOU. The rest of the phone call felt like it had been switched to mute and all I could hear was the swishing of blood pounding in my heart and head.
Then a few minutes later I was sitting in the waiting room of a hospital looking at the face of my daughter for the first time. I felt like I couldn’t breathe but yet wanted to dance. (I’m guessing to anyone looking on, I looked like I had a physical disorder). I was so excited!! God answered my prayer!!!
But then by evening, fear had settled in along with Satan throwing accusations at me. “You can’t do this again, you are a failure already, you don’t have faith big enough to move any tiny little ant hills let alone a mountain”.
You see, Satan knows your weak spots, the soft areas where your armor lets exposed.
Gary had lost his voice over this time.. You know..where I needed a voice, one louder than the voice in my head. We needed to do mountains of talking but yet we didn’t. God has a funny sense of humor.
Before you can tell China yes, you need to have an International Adoption Doctor review the file and try to translate the medical terms into things we understand. And also ask the orphanage for a update (you may or may not get one). And when we finally got that all back...(seemed like forever)(I kept refreshing and refreshing my email all day long, every day)....
then we say YES, kicking our fear to the curb.
We just have to keep coming back to God’s faithfulness and His answer to our prayer.
After we say yes.. we realized that it was Jan 16th. Exactly 2 yrs later of when we made our decision to start again. The same day, that we will remember Jess and how she touched our lives and hearts forever! I have no doubt if she was here on earth, her face would have lit up in joy.
Fast forward to now... We have this beautiful little face in our minds constantly. She will be 2 in March. We are so excited. I want to get all of Josie’s little clothes out and see if we have any tiny enough for Zuri. I want to buy a carrier, room monitor, bottles, and shoes. Cute little shoes. I want to feel all the excitement of getting a travel approval.
But all travel is stopped. I may not need little shoes. Or tiny clothes.
And Josie just cried herself to sleep because she is lonely.
Zuri lives under 10 hrs away from the center of this Coronavirus. If we just knew if she was safe. If we knew when we will get to travel. It’s just a nightmare that will not go away every single night. And it continues into the days. Haunting our every waking hours.
We just keep repeating to ourselves that God knows our path. To just keep leaning back into His embrace. But the tears still sneak out and overflow.
Just keep praying for us to continue to trust that God has our story in His hand. And pray for China.
