The Plan. Revised. Part III.

[Recap from the last entry:  Tim and I had received an e-mail about a an older boy in China who was listed for adoption but was about to become ineligible due to his age.  We sent off a "long shot" inquiry to the U.S. agency that had listed him, and were somewhat unnerved when the response came back that yes, if we worked hard at getting all our paperwork done, we could realistically adopt him.]

The first couple of days after we got that affirmative reply to our e-mail, I was all jumbled up inside.  I had a hard time focusing on anything for thinking of this child, and the decision we had to make.  We were pretty sure that we were the only family that was considering adopting him.  And since the window for him to be adopted was rapidly drawing to a close, it seemed there was a good chance that we were the only family that was going to consider him.  So our decision was going to define the course of his life.  Would he get a forever family, at the expense of moving to another country and culture where he would spend his teen years sticking out like a sore thumb and might never fully fit in?  Or would he stay where he was, where his opportunities--even opportunities for significant relationships--would be limited by his orphan status and his disability, but at least he understands how the system works and knows how to play his role in it?  I HATE being responsible for decisions that mess with other people's lives.  But we had asked the question and now we were stuck.  We had to decide.

We learned that we had the opportunity to pursue this adoption on a Monday afternoon.  On Tuesdays Tim teaches an early morning class, followed by office hours.  He takes Esther in with him and puts her in the daycare there for the morning.  It's good social experience for her, and gives me a chance to get extra stuff done.  So on Tuesday I was praying about this child and hoping desperately for a clear answer.  I had so many questions.  How would bringing this child home affect Esther?  What if he did something that hurt or scared her, potentially leaving permanent scars?  How would taking him away from everything he's ever known affect him?  Was his orphanage director right in pushing so hard to find him a foreign family, or did she have an over-idealized notion of the advantages of being raised by "wealthy Americans" and an incomplete understanding of how traumatic it is to move to a totally different world?  What if we did adopt him, and he grew up to decide that it wasn't worth it, and hated us for doing that to him?  I felt so helpless--how could I even make a responsible decision when so much was unknown, and unknowable?  I remember washing dishes and repeating the Jesus prayer over and over: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."  Me, a sinner.  That can mean a lot of things, but to me that day it meant falling short, incomplete, inadequate.  In and of myself, I simply didn't have what I needed to even make the right decision on this adoption.  Oh, how I longed for the One who did know all the answers to my unanswerable questions to step in and take over.  I knew I couldn't rely on myself, and what I wanted most at that moment was the comfort of being  able to depend on somebody else.  Mind you, one of the areas in which I have been wanting to grow these last few years is to become more dependent on God.  And even though I was confused and anxious and frustrated and racked with anticipatory guilt about all the ways I was going to mess up my child(ren)'s lives, it also felt very right to be throwing myself on God's mercy.  If I could just live in that frame of mind, I thought, then I wouldn't have to be afraid of getting myself into a situation that I couldn't handle.

Anyway, the heavens did not open and no voice declared either "This shall be your son" or "Leave that child alone; I have other plans for him."  But I was able to lay down, at least temporarily, my anxieties about myself, and reflect deeply on this child, and grieve for his hurts.  I wondered what important relationships he has now, and what the chances were that they would stay with him into adulthood.  I thought about how he would be considered doubly unlucky in China, both as an orphan, someone with no family pedigree, and as a person with an obvious disability, and how that would make it difficult if not impossible for him to find a wife.  The thought of him never having a family at all, neither by adoption nor by marriage, hurt.  And I thought about God, and how God is in the business of healing internal wounds, even those that seem like they should leave permanent scars.

Later in the day at a  time when Esther wasn't around, I shared some of my thoughts  with Tim.  He had, of course, been thinking as well, and didn't see any compelling reason at this point to say "no" to adopting this child.  So that evening we filled our our pre-application for this child's U.S. agency, and sent it in on Wednesday morning.  In addition to the child we had been praying about, we also requested information on another boy from the waiting child list who had really caught our attention.  We were sent the files for both boys that afternoon, along with more pictures.  We learned that the child who we had received the e-mail about had been initially listed for adoption more than two years earlier, and it sounded like the staff who chose to list him had investigated and seriously considered his feelings about being adopted by a foreign family before making that choice.  It also seemed that he had had a pretty stable life up to this point, living in the same place with the same people from babyhood until now, which is a promising indication that he has the ability to bond with a new family.  There are no guarantees, of course, but the additional information was encouraging to us.  I didn't feel quite as comfortable with the information in the other child's file, although there were some things that really touched me, and I'm waiting for the day when his profile disappears from the waiting child page and I know that he's found his family.

Somewhere around this time we started calling our extended family to let them know we were thinking about adopting this child, and to ask for their prayers.

Towards the end of the week we started looking more specifically at the requirement from China (a certain dollar figure in assets) that we thought we didn't meet.  Our contact at the U.S. agency gave us the worksheet they use for determining the  amount of assets a family has, along with instructions for filling it out.  When we sat down and filled in all the figures we discovered, to our surprise, that we now meet the requirement.  (We didn't last year.)  One more obstacle out of the way.

So we ended the week feeling like we could adopt this child, but still not certain whether we should.  And for more, you'll have to wait for another entry!