I Searched the World for You

Well, actually, we're still searching. Or waiting, really, while our case worker searches. Jared surprised me with this special necklace today. He said he was saving it for when we accept a referral, but decided I needed it early. I did. I've touched it many times today thinking of this unknown little one. Praying for some news soon.

He is Good

I know it's time to update because the past few times I've texted or called family and friends, I've gotten a "Is there any news?!!!?" response. The answer to that is, yes, there is news, but no, not the kind of news we've been wanting and waiting for. In short, it's looking like our wait is going to be a bit longer than we originally thought. Basically, when we started the process of adopting from China, we assumed that we would be matched from the shared list, because that's how many families were being matched at the time. But during the past year, fewer and fewer minor special needs children are being listed on the shared list, and more of those children are being placed with specific agencies through orphanage partnerships. Our agency is relatively new to orphanage partnership. We only have one partnership and currently, all of the children from that orphanage who are paper ready for adoption have already been matched with families (which is absolutely amazing, by the way). The good news is that they are currently working on paperwork for 45 children! Most of those children will be severe special needs, but we have been told that 10-15 of them will have moderate special needs. We don't know if one of the moderate needs babies is our child, and the paperwork won't be ready for another few months, so it looks like it will be at the very least a few months until we are matched, if not longer.


Is that news disappointing? Yes. Of course it is. But it's ok. Adoption is full of delays and changing plans. Our plan has changed all along. One thing that prompted us to start earlier than planned was hearing stories of Ethiopia adoption where the wait time increased dramatically for families in process. Our wait time has not increased dramatically. We are excited to know who our baby is. We want him in our arms. We wish it would happen sooner than later. But we will wait for him. He (or she, of course!) is worth the wait. We've heard it said many times and we believe it! We will pursue him no matter how long it takes.


And in the meantime? While we wait? We remember that God is good. We tell our children "God is good, all the time". Because He is. He has been so good to us. His goodness is seen in our agency's partnership with this orphanage, in the care of waiting children, and in the connection of families. I see His goodness in the joyful dancing of the two miracles our family has already been given. I see His goodness in the sunshine coming in the windows. He is so good to allow us, our little family, to be part of this amazing miracle of life called adoption. He was good when He called us, and He is good in the wait.


We don't know what the rest of the year holds for us. Maybe we're waiting longer so we have more time to save and have the rest of the money we need. Maybe our baby just isn't ready yet. Maybe my heart needs more time to just be Gracie and Liam's mama. Maybe there's a really good reason we aren't supposed to travel this year at all. I don't know. I don't know why children are born with special needs or why they must wait for a family. But I know that my God is good and He has a plan that is far better than mine. Today, I'll rest in that.

Still Here, Still Waiting

I haven't updated much, because there hasn't been much to update. We are in one of our last stages of waiting before being matched. We've been fingerprinted, approved to adopt from China by U.S. Immigration, and had all of our paperwork authenticated, and now it's all on it's way to China! What we are waiting on now is called LID, or a log in date. Our case worker said we could have one in as little as 2 weeks (Eek!!), but I've also heard from families that it took 5 weeks to get one. And of course, we are still in the middle of Chinese New Year celebrations, so I'm prepared for a longer wait. This step is huge because after we have an LID, we are able to be matched with a child from the shared list!

So, for those not in the adoption world, there are 2 ways we can be matched with a child. The first way is to be matched with a child from the shared list, which is released about once a month to all agencies. After we are LID, our caseworker will look on the shared list for our child. We could be matched the first month or it could take several months. The other way to be matched is with a child from an orphanage our agency has partnered with. Currently, our agency only has one orphanage partnership, but it's still a possibility that our baby is there!

So, basically, we're back to waiting. Waiting for a log in date, and then waiting for a match. We are so ready. I mean, as ready as we can be, I guess. But ready. Ready for a face. For some details. Ready to fall in love again. I can't wait to see who this very special little one is. But for now, we wait.

The Beginning of the Wait

Since we signed our contracts with our adoption agency, I have had a standing appointment with our case worker every other Thursday afternoon for a phone call together. It's just a way for us to connect, ask questions, hear about what's going on, and make sure we're on track. When I had my call this past Thursday, she informed me that we've graduated! We're so done with paperwork (for now) that she no longer feels a need to check in with each other so often. We talked about our timeline, and she thinks (no guarantees of course!) that we could have a referral within about 3-6 months, but to be prepared for anytime. Our dossier is currently in D.C. and once our immigration approval comes back, our case worker expects to be logged in about 5 weeks after that. Again, no guarantees, and we've certainly had delays up to this point, so I'm not holding my breath. We still have not been fingerprinted, and I've been hearing from other adoptive moms that the immigration process took a good 2 months.

In the meantime, we mostly just wait. We could receive a special focus referral, or we could receive a referral from the orphanage our agency has a partnership with, which isn't very likely at this point. So we wait. And have fun with the little sweeties we have at home. This is my favorite time of year, and the next several weeks are going to be very full, with holiday celebrations, shopping, crafting, baking, a special birthday party, travels...

I am ready for this next part of our lives, where we hold our sweet Chinese baby in our arms, but I am also thrilled for the months ahead of loving on my two little ones who are getting big way too fast. I think some quality time with them and enjoying our days of being a family of 4 is just what the doctor ordered.

On Special Needs Part 2

For the past several months, I've been feeling like an imposter about alot of things. There have been the moments that someone has mentioned how "patient" I am with my kids and I want to laugh out loud. Or how creative I am, or how clean my house is... I'm not even going to get into why that makes me feel like a fraud, but I think you can figure it out. Then I trained all summer and ran a half marathon in September. But I still feel guilty telling people that I run. I always feel like it should come with a disclaimer that I am super slow. Like I need to explain.

And then there is the adoption. For a while, I refused to even add the "special needs" part when we talked about the adoption. I worried people would get the wrong idea. I didn't feel worthy of the title of special needs mom. The needs we are open to seemed insignificant and not even like special needs anyway. I just didn't want anyone to think I considered myself special just because we are adopting a child with special needs.

Then, life happened. For the first few weeks, I lived in denial. I assumed God would take it away. Or that there was a mistake. After the second opinion and a few weeks of watching carefully, I woke up and realized it was true. My child, one who lives at home already, was diagnosed with a special need. I realized that adoption isn't going to make me a special needs mama. Because I already am one.

A friend told me "___ is still the same kid. A diagnosis doesn't change who he/she is". Oh, it's so true. That little darling of mine is still the person God created him/her to be. He knew. That little person is still my baby. I don't love him/her any less. There are unknowns. Our sweetie may deal with extra challenges for a long time, or he/she may overcome them quickly. Meanwhile, our lives are filled with therapy and praying for healing, but preparing for a long road. I just keep remembering this need is one part of him/her. That kid is so amazing in so many ways. Just like those babies waiting for families. I feel so positive that we are on the right path.

I've heard before that God doesn't call the equipped, but He equips the called. That's what's happening in our home. Before Jared and I knew that we would adopt a child with special needs, God knew that He would make us special needs parents whether we followed the call or not. Suddenly, I am much less afraid of the unknowns in adoption or the "special needs" our children may have, because I know I'm not the one in control of it all. And I know, without a doubt, that love is much more powerful than any need. I know that our family is so capable of love and we are ready to love whichever child is coming to us.

I don't feel like an imposter anymore. At least not with the adoption. We are adopting a special needs child. Their needs may be great, they may be minor. As we've learned recently, we can do all we can do, but ultimately we don't get to decide these things. I know we'll love him either way. And I know he'll fit right in. This journey has taken us places we didn't expect. Sometimes those places are hard and there will be more hard places ahead. There is going to be so much joy though. I know it. I'm ready. So bring it.

Just another day closer to you, Baby.

On Special Needs...

When we tell people we are doing a special needs adoption, especially family, the reaction usually involves some fear for us. Most friends and family, and even strangers, wonder if we know what we are getting into. Honestly, no, we don't. When we first started talking about adopting, we never considered special needs, and when we think about it now, we don't really know when we decided to pursue a child with special needs. But here we are.

In China's program, we were able to fill out a checklist of needs that we are open to. Our case worker, who will place our child with us, has that list, and she will use it as a guide for helping us find our baby. As I've posted about before, after we receive a file from her, we are able to share it with our pediatrician and accept or decline. So in some ways, we do have control over the needs our child will have. However, we have been warned to expect greater or lesser needs than what we think we are getting. We know there is no guarantee.

That checklist is difficult. To complete it, we googled, researched, prayed, considered our lifestyle, and had a long consult with an international pediatrician. Filling it out was a bit of a rollercoaster ride. We started with very, very few needs. But then you start to feel like saying no to certain needs is the same as saying a child with that need is unadoptable. Which is not true. But emotion gets in the way. So our list grew quite a bit. Then we had the consult with the pediatrician, and the list decreased again. Because you have to have compassion, and we want to be open to as much as we can, but we also have to be wise. There are certain needs that are just not compatible with our family right now. For instance, we live in an older home with all bedrooms upstairs. It is likely not possible to add a wheelchair lift. So a child in a wheelchair, or a child with a condition that may lead to mobility issues would not be a wise decision. (And probably wouldn't have been approved during our home study anyway). There are other conditions that are not as easy to make a decision on.

Let me add that the list is very personal. Please don't feel bad if you've asked about our list. But know that the decisions that led to the list were not made lightly, and that prayer and tears went into that list. We feel pain over some of the needs we had to say "no" to. So be aware that many families do not wish to share their list with everyone.

We ended up with a list we feel very confident with. It has needs on it that we knew at the beginning would be there, it has needs that we never thought would be there, and it has some "no" checks that we thought would be "yes". It's been amazing how we've been stretched during the process. How our hearts have changed and how excited we are to bring home our child. How things that seemed like a big deal at the beginning feel like of comfortable to us now and how aware we now are that a person's "special needs" are just one aspect of that person and don't define him.

So, no, in some ways we don't know what we are getting into. But we feel like we have been given discernment and we are as prepared as we can be (for now) for whatever our baby brings. We probably won't be able to handle it alone. But together with God, our family, and our pediatrician, I think we'll all be just fine.

A rare, all technical, no emotion post. :)

I just wanted to update a little bit on where we currently are in the process of adopting our little one. It may be a little bit boring, but we've had a lot of questions about where we are recently, so I felt like I should take the time to explain.We started in May with an application to our agency for their China Special Needs Program and we completed all our notarized contracts in June. So mid June is when we officially started gathering documents and paper chasing actually began. Our agency required us to complete all of our education courses and fill out all of the home study paper work before having actual home visits. Home study paperwork is very detailed and was a 2 page checklist of documents needing completed. I can share that with anyone who is interested.

During the time that we worked on home study paperwork, we also gathered documents for our dossier. The dossier is basically notarized, state certified original copies of documents that verify we are who we say we are. Birth and marriage certificates, psychologist letters, employment/income verifications, medical letters, criminal checks, etc. These documents must be no more than 6 months old when the dossier gets authenticated and translated. The dossier is what goes to China, for us to be approved to adopt a child there. Besides for the documents I listed, the dossier also includes an approved home study and an approved immigration letter.

In order to get the immigration approval letter, we have to apply for it, and to apply, we must send them an approved copy of our home study. So you can see that the home study is crucial to everything!

In our specific situation, our home study (for reasons out of our control) is taking an especially long time to get to us. It is approved, but we still have not received our copies. Since we can't apply for immigration without it, there started be a concern that we would not get our immigration approval in time to get the entire dossier translated before some of our documents started to expire. (Since we started in June, and they only last 6 months, they will start expiring mid December). Our entire dossier is complete, besides for the immigration approval.

So... where we are at... Our case worker had us go ahead and mail in the dossier to be authenticated and translated so that those documents won't expire. We *should* receive our approved home study copies within a few days, and we will immediately file our I800-A (our immigration form). As soon as we receive approval, our agency will add it to our dossier and it will be complete! It will then go to China, and we will receive a log in date. And from that point, we just wait to be matched.

We are so happy to be mostly done with our paper work stage. Everything on our end is complete, so we just wait and act as needed, but the major parts are done. And just in time for the holidays!