Tuesday we woke up to see an email containing pictures and medical information about a thirteen month old with cleft lip and palate. Our adoption workers matched us with him overnight. He is in foster care in remote northern China, called Inner Mongolia. I’m already making plans to nickname him Genghis Khan. Sounds manly, huh? His home is a land of rolling grassy hills, snow covered sand dunes, and a never-ending blue sky. It’s hard to comprehend that I’ll be going there in a matter of months. Even harder to comprehend my son lives there.
He was abandoned at a shopping mall and now lives in foster care. They think his birthday is October 9, 2009, but you can never be sure with orphans. For some reason his lip hasn’t been fixed, according to his outdated medical information. It says that he didn’t meet the requirements to get his lip fixed, which is hard to understand why that is the case. A cleft palate makes eating and drinking difficult (not surprising it’s hard to eat with a hole in the roof of your mouth) so he is somewhat underweight. But the three doctors we’ve had look over the info feel that it’s not a big deal because it seems he is developing normally otherwise. If they aren’t concerned, then neither are we. So we have agreed to adopt this little boy.
It was strange meeting a child through two awkwardly translated medical forms and three obligatory pictures. He’s still a cute guy. His eyes are like two big brown cups of coffee. Beautiful eyes. Unforgettable eyes. People keep telling us how sweet he looks. And he does look sweet. But it’s also hard not to project your feelings of sadness onto this little boy whose parents abandoned him because (for a reason we’ll never know) they felt unable to help his condition. I sat with one son on my lap, looking at pictures of another son we’ve never met. It is a strange emotion. It’s hard not to feel detached from it all, like you’re reading a case study of a distant person. It's because he is a distant person in a distant land, but he’s also my son who I want on my lap just as badly. Lord willing, he will be in a matter of a few months.
So today we know who our boy is. We are so excited. We will post pictures and more information sometime. We want to make sure all is final before we do, and we hope to get updated medical information and pictures from the CCAA. Our next step is to complete our LOI (Letter of Intent/plan for care). Then we’ll crisscross the Pacific with FedEx'ed paperwork for a few months and hopefully be going to get him in early spring 2011.
Thanks for all the comments, prayers, and wishes of congrats. We are humbled at the kindness of our former pediatrician, doctors we barely know, adoption workers who work on their days off, friends calling and texting daily, and our family. We are thankful.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
this could be the week
Friday we could find out who our little boy is. Let me explain.
A couple days ago we spoke with our adoption case manager (named April) who works with special needs adoptions in China. From everyone’s best guess, a new list of special-needs children will be released this Thursday night (11/18). If there are boys on the list with minor special needs (which there are usually several), we will be contacted Friday morning by April and we will see the face of our son for the first time.
I know this is complicated. Here’s the nitty-gritty. When our agency confirms a list is being released, the case workers stay up all night (to be on Chinese time) and frantically match families with kids. It’s like the NFL Draft without the last-minute trades and, well… without the football players. Picture a bunch of coffee-hyped adoption workers with eyes glued to computer screens until sunrise, reviewing names, faces, and medical conditions, and hurrying to match families with children before a jerk from another agency matches before they do. Kind of like the last minutes of an eBay auction: “Darn you surfer4973! That iPod was mine!” Except it’s not iPods. These workers are dealing with lives. They are changing families. Our family. Friday morning we hope to receive an email with a name, medical info, and picture of a boy. We have 72 hours to let our doctors look over the info and agree to adopt. If we agree, that picture is of our son.
April said that on the vast majority of lists, there are several boys with minor medical conditions (such as cleft lip/palate, club foot, missing fingers, etc). So likely the list will come out Thursday, and likely there will be several boys we could adopt, and so likely we’ll be matched this Friday. That’s a lot of likelies. But adoption isn’t a cut-and-dry process. Nothing important ever is.
We began the adoption process in January. It has been ten months of paperwork purgatory. Filling out paperwork. And notarizing paperwork. And mailing paperwork. And authenticating the notarized, mailed paperwork. And still, I am shocked that it’s here. This could we the week we get to see our boy for the first time. I’m freaked out by the idea. Sure, I’m excited, but in a holy-crap sort of way. What’s he look like? What will we see in those little eyes looking back at us? Will he look happy? Will our hearts break? Will he look anything like the face I’m imagining? Will we love him at first sight, or just not feel it? (It’s common to do either.) We have scores of questions. And many of them may be answered Friday.
Pray for us. We need patience and faith. Pray for our families. And pray for April and the other case workers. It is their job to choose a son for us. But I’ll be honest. My faith isn’t in April and her team, though they are good at what they do. I rest in the fact that God is sovereign. He has chosen who our son is supposed to be. Our boy doesn’t know us, and we likely can’t pronounce his name right or find his hometown on a map. But he’s alive and probably in a crib right now. And God has sovereignly chosen him to be part of our family out of the billions of families on earth. God chose Anne to pick him up when he runs crying. God chose Wyatt to teach him about soccer and Legos. God wanted Rex to wrestle him to the ground. And God chose me to teach him how to say “Daddy.” That’s why we are looking forward to Friday. This could be the week we get one giant step closer to our boy being home. Please pray with us if you will.
A couple days ago we spoke with our adoption case manager (named April) who works with special needs adoptions in China. From everyone’s best guess, a new list of special-needs children will be released this Thursday night (11/18). If there are boys on the list with minor special needs (which there are usually several), we will be contacted Friday morning by April and we will see the face of our son for the first time.
I know this is complicated. Here’s the nitty-gritty. When our agency confirms a list is being released, the case workers stay up all night (to be on Chinese time) and frantically match families with kids. It’s like the NFL Draft without the last-minute trades and, well… without the football players. Picture a bunch of coffee-hyped adoption workers with eyes glued to computer screens until sunrise, reviewing names, faces, and medical conditions, and hurrying to match families with children before a jerk from another agency matches before they do. Kind of like the last minutes of an eBay auction: “Darn you surfer4973! That iPod was mine!” Except it’s not iPods. These workers are dealing with lives. They are changing families. Our family. Friday morning we hope to receive an email with a name, medical info, and picture of a boy. We have 72 hours to let our doctors look over the info and agree to adopt. If we agree, that picture is of our son.
April said that on the vast majority of lists, there are several boys with minor medical conditions (such as cleft lip/palate, club foot, missing fingers, etc). So likely the list will come out Thursday, and likely there will be several boys we could adopt, and so likely we’ll be matched this Friday. That’s a lot of likelies. But adoption isn’t a cut-and-dry process. Nothing important ever is.
We began the adoption process in January. It has been ten months of paperwork purgatory. Filling out paperwork. And notarizing paperwork. And mailing paperwork. And authenticating the notarized, mailed paperwork. And still, I am shocked that it’s here. This could we the week we get to see our boy for the first time. I’m freaked out by the idea. Sure, I’m excited, but in a holy-crap sort of way. What’s he look like? What will we see in those little eyes looking back at us? Will he look happy? Will our hearts break? Will he look anything like the face I’m imagining? Will we love him at first sight, or just not feel it? (It’s common to do either.) We have scores of questions. And many of them may be answered Friday.
Pray for us. We need patience and faith. Pray for our families. And pray for April and the other case workers. It is their job to choose a son for us. But I’ll be honest. My faith isn’t in April and her team, though they are good at what they do. I rest in the fact that God is sovereign. He has chosen who our son is supposed to be. Our boy doesn’t know us, and we likely can’t pronounce his name right or find his hometown on a map. But he’s alive and probably in a crib right now. And God has sovereignly chosen him to be part of our family out of the billions of families on earth. God chose Anne to pick him up when he runs crying. God chose Wyatt to teach him about soccer and Legos. God wanted Rex to wrestle him to the ground. And God chose me to teach him how to say “Daddy.” That’s why we are looking forward to Friday. This could be the week we get one giant step closer to our boy being home. Please pray with us if you will.
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