Just this week I was getting ready to actually start writing in this blog, as a forum for our adoption journey. Last July, we found a little girl in China with whom we immediately fell in love. She was waiting to be adopted. For the third time. Her first family that was going to adopt her, actually made it all the way to China and to her, and then decided they did not want to deal with her medical issues. This was in 2008. In 2011, a second family was set to go to China and bring her home within a few months, when the husband/dad was tragically killed in a rafting accident. We immediately began the arduous process that is international adoption, and my husband and I vowed that we would never go to bed at night if there was more paperwork or things that could be done on our end to move this adoption along. We were getting so close. So close that we had it narrowed down to a very high liklihood that we would be traveling to get her this coming August, within days of my husband taking a bar exam, no less!
During this process, we were having an unusually difficult time of trying to get updated medicals on her. We knew she was in dire need of another surgery, and that that particular surgery is best performed in the US. Although we didn't ever get more information, medically, we did, just last night, receive approx 15 pictures of her. We were so thrilled. It was all seeming so real. And she was most definitely our girl. My husband had researched her medical condition extensively, and we were prepared for the worst, medically, and were honored to be the ones to get her help. Andy was already defensive of her to anyone that questioned our decision to adopt a special needs child. He would have been her best advocate in school, with the doctors, our family, friends. For Mother's day, he had a picture of her enlarged and put in a frame. We had already named her.
Just this afternoon, I was listening to Tom Waits' song, Picture in a Frame, that we always associated with our girl. At the end of that song, the phone rang, and our adoption agency's number was on caller ID. This usually signals good news, and I immediately answered it. Sadly, it was the worst news we could have received. Our girl is not our girl. She is not coming home to us. The CCCWA has refused to allow her to be adopted, and who knows what the real reasons are behind all that. They say she is too fragile, medically. They say her foster family wants her. Given what we know about Chinese government, it all sounds suspect.
I have spent all day on the phone with our wonderful agency, with senators and legislatures and the State Department, other adoptive parents, friends in China, all to hit a brick wall. It seems hopeless, and I wish this story had a better ending, but it is the reality of the adoption world, and we are left to grieve, for our boys who are sad to not have their sister come home, and for ourselves, and mostly for our precious girl that will not be given the opportunities that could have been provided her if she were able to be adopted. I still hang on to a thread of hope that someone will change their mind, or someone can be convinced, but that thread seems about to snap. Please pray for us all, especially our precious girl, who we may never get to meet, this side of heaven.
During this process, we were having an unusually difficult time of trying to get updated medicals on her. We knew she was in dire need of another surgery, and that that particular surgery is best performed in the US. Although we didn't ever get more information, medically, we did, just last night, receive approx 15 pictures of her. We were so thrilled. It was all seeming so real. And she was most definitely our girl. My husband had researched her medical condition extensively, and we were prepared for the worst, medically, and were honored to be the ones to get her help. Andy was already defensive of her to anyone that questioned our decision to adopt a special needs child. He would have been her best advocate in school, with the doctors, our family, friends. For Mother's day, he had a picture of her enlarged and put in a frame. We had already named her.
Just this afternoon, I was listening to Tom Waits' song, Picture in a Frame, that we always associated with our girl. At the end of that song, the phone rang, and our adoption agency's number was on caller ID. This usually signals good news, and I immediately answered it. Sadly, it was the worst news we could have received. Our girl is not our girl. She is not coming home to us. The CCCWA has refused to allow her to be adopted, and who knows what the real reasons are behind all that. They say she is too fragile, medically. They say her foster family wants her. Given what we know about Chinese government, it all sounds suspect.
I have spent all day on the phone with our wonderful agency, with senators and legislatures and the State Department, other adoptive parents, friends in China, all to hit a brick wall. It seems hopeless, and I wish this story had a better ending, but it is the reality of the adoption world, and we are left to grieve, for our boys who are sad to not have their sister come home, and for ourselves, and mostly for our precious girl that will not be given the opportunities that could have been provided her if she were able to be adopted. I still hang on to a thread of hope that someone will change their mind, or someone can be convinced, but that thread seems about to snap. Please pray for us all, especially our precious girl, who we may never get to meet, this side of heaven.
