The Plan. Revised. Part IV.

I'm finally getting back to this series!  This time I had to go back and re-read my previous entries myself in order to remember where in the story I was!  To recap: We had been thinking of adding to our family again when we learned about an aging-out boy in China whom we could realistically adopt.  It was a scary step to contemplate actually taking, but as we sought more information during a week of thinking about it, we were generally encouraged.

On Saturday of that week, we had an event that I had been really looking forward to: a gathering of families with children from China!  This was an answer to prayer in and of itself, because when we moved here we really hadn't known whether there were other families in the area with children adopted from China, and if so, how to connect with them.  But one day Tim got a message on his work phone from a fellow adoptive mother of a Chinese child.  She had heard through the grapevine that there was a new professor at Tim's college who had a child from China, and she wanted so much to connect with us that she started calling through the list of departments trying to track him down!  Her family knew or knew of several other families with children from China, and she was planning a lunch for us to all meet and get to know each other.  Of course, we were thrilled at the prospect.  So that Saturday we duly set out to gather with five other families with children from China (and one Chinese woman who works at Tim's university, whom the organizer had connected with while trying to track down Tim).  We walked into the room, we said hi to people, another family walked in behind us...and wouldn't you know it, their little girl has the exact same special need as the boy whose file we were looking at.  Mind you, this is not a common special need.  So as soon as I got a minute to whisper to Tim without anyone else hearing me, I asked, "Do we tell them??"  (We hadn't planning on telling anyone at this gathering that we were thinking of adopting again, seeing as it was by no means a sure thing.)  Tim agreed with me that we should tell them, so we managed to sit with them at lunch and talked about this disability.  One of the first things they said was, "This is one of the best places in the country to live if your child has this condition!  There is a nationally-known specialist, and lots of resources, and they're free to state residents!"  I mean, really?  This is not a part of the country that is known for being cutting-edge.  But apparently, it "just so happens" to have all the resources we could want for this particular child's medical needs.  AND the resources are affordable to us.  Another of our major questions had been whether we had the financial ability to adequately manage this child's condition after we adopted him.  Well, one more question checked off the list.  Later in the afternoon, as all the little girls except Esther were coloring quietly on the floor, I watched Esther playing chase with Tim's Chinese colleague's ten-year-old son and shrieking with laughter, and I allowed myself to imagine her doing the same with her big brother.

When we got home, we had more excitement: in our mailbox was an envelope with a CD from the adoption agency, which had lots more pictures of this child, and even a video!  After putting Esther down for her nap, Tim and I watched raptly.  We had already read in his file many of the things that we saw on the video, but we got to see for ourselves how he functions with his disability, and heard with our own ears that he does, indeed, have a beautiful singing voice (one of the things we had read about him).  There was one surprise: a nanny said that he had been living with a foster family for the previous six months, and was still with them!  This orphanage does not, as far as I know, have any organized foster care program, so we took it to mean that someone who had met him had been so impressed with him that they had gotten permission for him to live with them.  On the one hand, that suggested that he was the kind of kid who could adjust well to a family.  On the other hand, it raised all kinds of questions.  What was his relationship with this family?  How traumatic would it be for him to be separated from them?  Was it possible that they would be able to adopt him, or willing to be permanently "in his corner," if he was not listed for international adoption?

So we continued thinking...and praying...and widening the circle of people that we were asking to pray for us.  We talked about our situation with a few people at church on Sunday.  Ironically, someone that we had not yet told remarked to someone else in my presence that her cousin had just gotten home from China after adopting a five-year-old with...yep, that same medical condition that the child we were considering had.  Interesting.