There have been many changes in our Adoption Story over the last few weeks. Our China Adoption was a solid plan. We had Excel spreadsheets, budgets, timelines...a plan set in stone, it was solid!
And then there was a girl...
a very little girl in a red dress with the biggest eyes and the sweetest face we had ever seen.
She was on a waiting child list. She was not spoken for and the agency was sending her file back!
He looked. I looked. We agreed she was very cute and then we moved on or so it would seem.
Within a few days he said: "I know it's not what we planned but if we moved this money here and the kids agreed to this then maybe we could do this..."
Hmmm.
Was he saying what I think he was saying.
I confirmed what I though he was saying.
My heart was in my throat.
I inquired about the girl.
My hands shook.
We are doing this.
I got an email response very quickly. I was told that our names were placed on a waiting list of interested adoptive parents and that there was very little time. I also learned that when you are going through the Special Needs Adoption Program the most important step is your
Medical Conditions Checklist. It holds your place in line.
I did not know this.
This was important information.
We had already submitted our family info sheet, which is like a brief summary with demographic, social and financial snapshots of your family. We did not, however, submit the MCC.
We were dreading that.
The MCC is a long list of medical conditions that an adoptive parent must consider when they are referred a Special Needs/Waiting Child.
We had to go down the list and check off "yes" or "no" to each medical condition.
This indicates to the placing agency whether or not we are open to adopting a child
with that medical condition.
Some conditions are very minor and easily correctable but they range from minor/correctable to Cerebral Palsy, Spina Bifida, Blindness, Major Heart Disease...these are heavy hitters!
There is a lot to consider and let me tell you it feels UGLY.
It feels like you are rejecting a child that has already been abandoned, that has such a great need for a loving family, medical care, the basics. It feels heinous.
It feels even worse when you and your partner look at this list from two different worlds.
As a nurse, I have relative comfort with all kinds of things! I look at the list pretty readily and say Yes, Yes, Yes to a lot of things. My poor husband works in an electronics lab and has little or no exposure to many of these things. It all terrifies him. He knows that my son had well over a dozen surgeries in his eighteen years and it makes him sick to think about it.
We sat down with this list and he braced himself for a battle.
There was no battle though. We both felt horrible.
We had to consider our home, our family (immediate and extended), access to community services, our lifestyle in general and we had to apply all of these considerations to this list.
We went to church, we lit candles, we looked for signs and messages in answer to our prayers.
We submitted the list and we felt pretty good about it.
Guess what happened? We were challenged.
We were told that the little girl in the red dress may have one of the heavy hitters that we said "no" to.
Know what? We didn't care!?! All of a sudden, it did not matter. We were saying "YES!"
We felt like she could be our daughter and we were willing to s-t-r-e-t-c-h way beyond what we thought we were comfortable with. I gave Pete an out. I said we can take our name off of the list.
He said "No we can't. She could be my daughter. We don't walk away from our kids if something is wrong with them. We get them help. We love them and make them better."
I really, really love this man.
We consulted with neurologists, child development specialists and therapists.
We got educated quickly.
We harassed the agency and we let them know we were committed. We didn't even have the official file but we did have enough info to know the worst case scenarios and we were ready for that.
We took another leap of faith.
We filed our official application and paid the fee. We wanted to be ready.
We started treading into dangerous water. We started showing people pictures and talked about her non-stop. We just really felt like things would fall in to place.
(The way a young girl is painfully certain that if she could just meet Harry Stiles he would be sure to fall in love with her and take her away to be his forever, or at least take her to prom....
yes we were that bad.)
Well flash forward, the little girl in the red dress has a family working to bring her home now.
It is not us.
She is matched to another family and she is not our daughter.
Heartbreaking.
She is, however, a very important part of our adoption story.
Because of her we got the ball rolling. Really rolling, like a snowball going down hill!
She was a catalyst for us to step out in faith and do the things that up until now we had only talked about. She will always own a little piece of our hearts. She will always be in our prayers. I truly hope her parents are present in the blogosphere and by some chance we will be able to see that she is doing well with her family. We congratulate them and wish them many blessings.
We prayed for her to have a family. Our prayers were answered.
Now we are on the path to completing our dossier, turning our house upside down and beginning our homestudy. It's not just a plan anymore.
Thank you baby girl for opening our hearts and our minds.
We wish you a life filled with good health, love, joy and unspeakable beauty.
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