Important Adoption Update

Again, again, sorry for the quiet. I've been waiting for like six weeks for news to share. It's not the news I personally want, but I have accepted it as God's best for me and am hopeful.

In January, I clicked on the picture of a waiting child, a little Treasure, and felt hope for our adoption spring to life within me. I approached Stephen and we took some time before deciding to ask for more information. When we got it, we took some time to pray over whether we should adopt her or not. Then we submitted a document detailing how we would care for her special need (she is blind in both eyes). I went to doctors; I spoke with our regional and state visual impairment specialists. I spent quite a few hours thinking over and planning first steps for us to accommodate this treasure. So we hear back last week that we have no way of knowing if we can adopt her until Stephen turns 30 at the end of July.

You see, she's in China, this precious little spark, and China requires both parents to be 30 years old before they will allow a child to be referred to the couple. And our agency only has her file until April 30th, after which her file will go back into the shared files of China's Special Focus program.

We had 3 options, essentially: wait until Stephen turns 30 and see if she's still available, then begin our adoption again; decide that the timing was wrong and suspend our adoption again; or begin our adoption again in the hopes that she still will be available in July.

I can tell that the trial of our adoption is bearing fruit in that Stephen and I both agreed to continue this process of adopting from China, knowing that we may have a very disappointing July-August. I trust that, if she's supposed to be our daughter, God will allow us to adopt her. And if she isn't, that means she will have been adopted already, which is a big praise, because kiddos with visual impairment don't often get adopted.

And if she isn't supposed to be our daughter, God will bring our daughter to us, and I will look back and bless this long, painful process for the joy added to our family. Still, I'm holding onto hope that we'll bring this little treasure home around Christmas.