I truly wish I could give you all the password to show you all the precious children on the All Gods Children website.
I don't spend a lot of time looking unless a child is especially on my heart. M is always on my mind. M is blind and he is 8 years old. A is also on my heart quite a bit. She has a tumor growth problem and her last one turned up cancerous. She is 2. So many more with so many issues. But each one so precious and one that God gave to this world.
We jumped into this thinking that we would be adopting a sibling group within the US. After talking with the agency we chose to adopt internationally. When we asked where the greatest need was they didn't even hesitate, they said, "China". But everyone adopts from China! After much research we know why. The circumstances in China are one of the worst. It is a combination of several factors, each more heart breaking than the last.
Ok, China then! We began to look forward to adopting a little baby girl, as young as we could get, with something very correctable....a cleft palate, possibly even a repairable heart defect. Something easy. Something that was easy on us.
But looking through the kids and babies, watching the videos the agency took on their last mission trip, watching the videos of older kids being dropped off at baby hatches(http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1462626/abandoned-heartbreaking-moments-parents-leave-their-children-chinas?page=all), God has placed an even deeper meaning on our hearts. Easy is not what this is. Children being abandoned in baby hatches, sometimes by parents who would have given anything to keep them, is not easy. Babies and children who are going through the first part of their lives without their mommy kissing them good night is not easy. A blind boy who in a couple years, at age 14, will be out on his own, possibly institutionalized just because he is blind but otherwise is completely healthy, is not easy. Nothing about adoption is easy. Not what is happening to these kids now, not what happened to them or their parents in the past, not what could possibly happen to them in the future. Every part of this adoption is hard. And it is from God. Thank you God, for giving us this experience. Thank you for letting us pray for these precious precious souls.
Logically we should not take the 8 year old blind boy. Or the 4 year old blind girl. Or the girl with the cancerous tumors. Logically we probably shouldn't be adopting at all with 6 kids. We can't think logically. We have to think prayerfully. We cant let our pocketbook lead us, we have to let the Holy Spirit. We cant look through the kids on the page and brush uncomfortably past those kids that might make us cringe. We have to look at them, read their page, think about how their lives combined with ours would look, and pray pray pray.
We are SO thankful for each other. My husband is dealing with finances while I deal with fundraising. We are working as a team and talking to each other about what seems like peoples indifference to adding onto our family or their careless words about us adopting a child with special needs. When nothing seems to be going right, when we spend $100's only to make not even 50% of it back, we can talk to each other and know that we each feel the same way, that at least we have each other to understand.
We are SO thankful that soon we will have our social worker to talk to and ask questions. We will be on the "in" in the agency and be able to ask questions of other moms and dads who have taken home a baby or child with special needs.
We are so excited to move forward, to have a child picked out and to have help with that from our agency, China's agencies and our Social Worker. We are excited to get into the nitty gritty, dealing with travel arrangements, her new bedding and her suitcase to take with us to pick her up. To meet with our pediatrician, to set up his first appointment and get any surgeries scheduled. To pick out his school work for his first year of homeschooling or crib bedding and baby toys if he is a baby. To sit our kids down and really discuss the children that are our options, how they would work into our family.
So much to look forward to. So much work to be done. We are so thankful for each step that is taken that moves us further along. We appreciate your prayers above all. We thank you so much for being an ear when we cant shut up about the process or one of the kids. We thank you the most for the kind words and actions that you share with us. And thank you so much for anything you can donate- a dollar, $5.00, $100.00. Everything you donate helps bring our baby Hoffman home.
We THANK YOU.
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