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.