Finding Faith - The Story

It has taken me a little while to write this story out.  I knew it would be a long one.

A little over a year ago, for about two months straight I had this overwhelming feeling that God was wanting something from our family.  I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I knew He would show us in His time.  Week after week, this feeling got stronger and stronger.  I remember asking Wayne if he felt like The Lord was telling him something.  He didn't, but he assured me he would pray about it.

Our lives changed dramatically almost exactly one year ago.  Last April an orphan choir called His Little Feet came to our church.  From the moment they walked in the back of the sanctuary, I was a mess.  I don't know how much of their program I actually saw because I was crying so much.  About halfway through, I looked up at Wayne and his face was covered in tears.  I knew God was working.

You see, for years I have felt The Lord calling me to adoption (and even specifically to China.)  I told Wayne this before we were married, but he didn't exactly feel the same way.  :)  That was OK.  I knew he was the one The Lord had for me, and if this calling I felt was real I knew somehow it would happen.

As soon as we shut the car doors leaving church, Wayne said, "So, how much is it going to cost for us to go to China?"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That about explains how I felt at that moment.  We prayed about it and contacted our pastor the next day.  On Wednesday we met with him in his office, and everything we were feeling was confirmed.  Our family of four would soon become a family of five through the miracle of adoption!

We hit the ground running.  We contacted the local agency we were familiar with, and signed up for their informational meeting.  We did research, and we were trying to educate ourselves the best that we could.

And then we got news that put a hick-up in our journey.  I take a little pill for anxiety (along with 1/2 of America!), and this little pill is a big problem with China.  They do not prescribe any medication of this sort unless the person has serious psychological conditions (schizophrenia, bipolar, etc.)  So, we are told to get a letter from my doctor explaining that my situation was very minor and it does not affect my parenting capabilities at all.

Done.

China did issue us a waiver, but we had to find a child on the Special Focus list.  This is a list of children with pretty extreme, scary special needs.  We looked and looked.  We filled out our medical check list that stated what we felt like our family could handle and what we could not.  Let me tell you, that was no easy task.  When we first filled this paper out, very few things even in the moderate category were marked.

That's when we started looking specifically for a cataract baby.  Congenital Cataracts.  We've got that down pat.  We looked and looked some more.  We knew we needed to find a child under two for them to have any hope of vision in the future.  

While looking for a cataract baby, we also looked through all the other ones.  We found SEVERAL.  Every. single. time. we called about one they were already taken.  Don't get me wrong, that's a wonderful thing.  One less orphan!  But it still didn't get us anywhere.

After a few months we were told to look elsewhere.  We have looked into more countries (including domestic) than I can count.  There was always something.  We weren't old enough.  We could have children.  Stupid medication.  Time in country was too long for Wayne to take off of work.  We couldn't catch a break.

Then, in October, we found what we were certain was our daughter.  For a week we thought she was ours.  We went around imagining our lives with her.  Then, we heard back from the International Adoption Clinic who had reviewed her file for us...  All I could do was weep.  We were faced with a situation where we were the ones who were having to say yes or no.  I can tell you this, if we didn't have any other children to consider she would have been ours.  With the situation that we were faced with, through much prayer, we couldn't get a peace to move forward.

This is when I wrote the post saying we were stepping away from adoption.  We were frustrated.  We were angry.  We were hurt.  There are roughly 163 million orphans in this world and it didn't seem possible for us to be matched with one.

Even though we "stepped away," we never fully stepped away.  We limited the amount of time we were spending searching, but we were still looking.  Longing to find where The Lord wanted us.

November passed.

December passed.  Wayne finally deleted the file of the previous little girl off of his computer right before Christmas.

January came and went.

And then February.  We finally decided we were just going to take a leap of faith and start.  God was obviously not taking this calling away from us, so it was time to move forward to do something!

We called a social worker with a local agency that has helped us through this entire year of searching.  We told her our plans, and she told us what she was seeing on the shared list of children.  We still didn't know what to do.

That is when I got on a facebook group that advocates for Waiting Children in China.  I asked if anyone knew of a girl (we had been looking at boys too) who was under three, on the special focus list, and had needs that could be managed with time.  Out of over 1, 000 members, one lady responded with the cutest little girl I have ever seen.  I showed Wayne, and we agreed we would check on her.  Neither of us were getting our hopes up, or at least we were trying not to.

I called the next day, and she was still available.  They sent us her file, but they wouldn't put it on hold for us until we moved forward with her.  I then tell them about our waiver from China.  THEY HAD NEVER HEARD OF ANYONE GETTING THIS KIND OF WAIVER BEFORE!  My heart sank in my stomach.  She said any waiver they have ever received was for a specific child, they had ALL had serious special needs, and they had to practically beg for every single one of them.  It's crazy to me how they determine special needs.  So many of these kiddos have what we would consider serious special needs, but China doesn't.

She did tell me they were willing to try, but to not get our hopes up.  I could tell by the tone in her voice, she didn't think it would happen.  We filled out our initial paperwork, and sent another letter from my doctor.  And we waited.  And waited.

In the meantime my sister came home from her deployment.  I was so excited to see her that it helped with the wait.  We all headed to my parents' house to spend some time with her.  My mom, sister and I were out doing a little shopping on February 13th when I got the call.  I saw that it was a Washington number, and I knew it was our agency.  I quickly answered.

"Crystal?  I am so happy to tell you that you did receive the waiver from China!"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I absolutely could not wait to tell Wayne.  In fact, I have an adorable little video, but I can't figure out how to get it out of my text messages on my phone.  I went to Old Navy to try to find something that I could wrap showing him we had our girl.  This is the best I could come up with, and I thought it was appropriate.  :)

We were excited, but we still had to get our official preapproval.  We got our paperwork done as soon as we got home, and 8 days later we found out she was ours!  I can't wait to be able to share her picture.  We are currently working on our homestudy, and fundraising like crazy.  As soon as our homestudy is finished and our dossier is sent (those are just fancy words for a lot of paperwork), China will officially say she is ours and we can share her with the world.  

We cannot begin to tell you how excited we are, and how thankful we are that God's plan is so much better and bigger than ours.  When we first committed to doing this a year ago, our prayer was that this process show time and time again that He was in control of it all.  We pray that not only will our faith grow, yours will as well.