This little one’s photos and the brief amount of information provided (“likes musical toys”, “extroverted and active”) filled our thoughts for the two weeks we pored over and prayed over his file. China no longer has a healthy baby program available for foreign adoptions. That means that all children adopted from China to other countries come with some level of special need–from very small medical needs that have already been resolved, to needs that will require life-long care. From what has been said on paper about this little guy, his needs shouldn’t be overly complex. But there are just no guarantees in life. I imagined all kinds of worst case scenarios even as my heart ached to ask for this boy.

Jerry needed a little longer to process, especially in light of the failed match we had so recently gone through. It’s usually like that with us. He’s more cautious and calculated about decision making, where I’m more prone to just “know when I know.”

Finally we said the all important word. Yes! Yes, we would love the great honor of parenting this precious boy. On our 8th anniversary China gave us prior approval to proceed with our adoption. That means that as long as our official information matched the preliminary info provided, we should be accepted as his mom and dad! There are still so many unknowns, but as we’ve been reminded, love is risk. And what better risk is there really? We were over the moon with the news that we had been approved.

It’s hard to go on with your routine when you know such a big, important change is coming–but of course we did anyway. When you’re an expectant adoptive parent, no one can see any physical changes happening, so they don’t usually know to comment on your good news. Life just continues in spite of the daily dreams of your baby, somewhere far away. Work went on and the summer wound down. We went on a few cheap dates and people joked that we “better do that now” while we don’t need a babysitter.

All throughout 2017 I took walks and prayed, and took walks and prayed. Our homestudy was finished at the end of September, and we sent out our I800A form to the immigration people in Texas. I used an outdated version of the form at first and spent two weeks waiting only to have it returned to me with a request to use the newer version. I went for a very hard, long walk that night–trying to pray, but not succeeding very well. The correct version was done and resent. My birth certificate was lost for several weeks in it’s journey to be certified, only to finally appear out of nowhere after several calls to the office concerned. We waited all through November and December for a reply as we paper-chased and notarized, and arranged a little boy’s bedroom.

We got finger printed in Portland, filled out grant applications, celebrated Thanksgiving, and had a surprise birthday party for Jerry when he finally turned 30 and became old enough to adopt from China! It was just a tiny bit bittersweet because our goal had been to send all our paperwork (called a dossier) to China on his birthday–but immigration took a lot longer than expected, so this didn’t happen. Instead we spent several more weeks waiting for I800A approval to come.

We got our immigration approval on the day after Christmas. With it in the mail was a letter confirming that we would be receiving a $5000 grant! A few days later, my mom and I  braved the below zero temperatures and took a trip to Augusta (the state capital) to get all our papers state certified. Then off  they went to our agency. From there they took a trip to Washington for final approvals.

And then there’s today. Today our dossier (paperwork, remember?) goes to China! After weeks of prayers and preparation, it’s finally going! While this isn’t the day we had planned for, God has really picked a special date for this event. One year ago on this day, January 26, a doctor told Jerry and I that we would need a miracle to become parents. We felt crushed. But this day has been redeemed. Now this is the day that our dossier has gone to China. This is the day that we get to watch this unexpected miracle progress right before our very eyes.

It has been nearly a year since we first knew we would adopt. It’s been kind of a roller coaster ride of a year, but I believe now we’re closer than ever before to becoming parents.

Jerry and I knew we wanted to have children since before we got married, but last year we reached a kind of cross roads where the usual route to parenthood closed off in front of us. I’d already journeyed through several years of disappointment and watching friends announce pregnancy after pregnancy–so while the official “no” we got from the doctor was very painful, I was almost resigned to the news within a very short time of hearing it. The next day was Friday, and it found me desperately googling adoption agencies. Without even asking Jerry (though I do recommend getting your spouse on board!) I sent off a query to the first agency that really caught my attention. Somewhat to my alarm, one of their agents left me a voicemail later that same day.

Friday night I brought up adoption to Jerry. He wasn’t in the same place with processing our infertility as I was, so his first response was that he needed some time before we jumped into any big decisions like adoption. I did my best to realize the wisdom in this, and we tried to go on with our weekend as close to normal as possible.

On Saturday Jerry took the trash to the dump. While he was there he picked up a paper on the ground, assuming it was a bit of our trash that had gotten free. He looked at what the paper was. An adoption application. He quickly called me.

“Did you have an adoption application in the car with you?” he asked when I picked up.

“What? No. Why?” I said.

“I just found one on the ground here and I thought it must have fallen out of our car…”

We both felt that prickling feeling on the back of our necks as we contemplated the chances of finding an application like that here in our small town.

When Jerry got home he said, “I’m not usually one to see signs, but I’m pretty sure that that was one…”

Sunday we sat in church and Pastor turned to Galations and read of God redeeming them that were under the law “that we might receive the adoption of sons.” We blinked at each other, confident that God was bringing up adoption to us again.

The next week, with Jerry’s blessing, I had a long conversation with the adoption agency rep that had left me the message before. We discussed the types of adoption the agency provided and the pros and cons of each. My heart dropped a bit at the costs, but I went through it all with Jerry again that night anyway. Our hearts were drawn pretty quickly to China as the place where we would find our child. We have Chinese family living nearby, and hoped it might make it easier on a child to have some close family they could go to with questions about their heritage. China it was.

Our agency told us that China needed both of us to be 30 years of age before we could adopt a child. Jerry was only 29 at the time. We had to wait till six months from his 30th birthday to apply to the China program. I spent the months we had to wait praying, soul searching, and reading anything I could about China, adoption, and children with special needs. On June 4th we submitted our official application with the agency we talked to back in February. I researched other agencies and just never felt right about leaving that first one I found through google.

China has online lists of “waiting children” whose information is available to view at any time in the adoption process. We looked over a few files as waited, and felt very drawn to a 7 year old boy in particular. He was older than we had originally thought to adopt, but something about him pulled on our hearts. Over weeks and many emails, we tried to get more information from his orphanage, but the director there was uncooperative. In July, just when we thought we would step out in faith and ask to adopt him anyway, the door slammed shut in our faces and his file was pulled from our agency. Both Jerry and I felt heartbroken, but I (again without asking Jerry) quickly asked for the file of another child on the waiting child list. It might sound heartless not to spend some time grieving the loss of the other boy, but with so many orphaned children out waiting in the world, I had to keep marching forward. And it’s such a good thing I did. The next file contained the information for the beautiful little 2.5 year old boy that will–God willing–become our son this year.