Well as most of you know, we are adopting. Let me go back to how it all started. One of my cousins that we only get to see every other year because they live in California, introduced his new daughter to our family at Thanksgiving one year. She had a special need and we felt a tug on our heartstrings. As we drove home that year, we began our first of many conversations that we would have about adoption. It shocked us both that we would even consider adopting, but the pull was definitely there. That conversation died rather soon after we got home and we went on about our lives with our two boys.
A couple of years later, that same cousin introduced his second adopted daughter from China to our family and we again drove home talking about what our lives would be like if we were to adopt. But again as before, that conversation died and life resumed as normal. Thanksgiving 2010 was the year we met their third child. I had a great conversation with Rodney about what it was like to adopt and about their experiences. There was no doubt the desire was still there and growing rapidly. Things that he shared helped me to understand that the adoption in his mind was about far more than simply incorporating a new child into their family...it was about saving her life. This began the conversation that Lisa and I had on our way home from Thanksgiving that year that never died. We began to envision a new child in our home and realized that we truly wanted to move forward, but how? Bear in mind, we had our hearts set that we were not going to have anymore children. But God somehow kept this fire and desire alive and was stoking it. Money seemed to be our biggest obstacle, but we felt that if God could plant this desire in our hearts we should not say no for such a trivial reason.
We began talking with friends that had adopted from China and listened to their passion as they told their story. They could literally talk for hours on this single subject. It was quite inspiring, thinking to myself, maybe we can actually make this happen. We started participating in some webinars hosted by the agency we ultimately chose, and we continued to be encouraged that the path we were on was the right one for us. In March 2011, we sat the boys down for a heart to heart. As we told them that they were going to have a sister, there was great emotion from all of us. I was deeply touched by my youngest son Devin who cried tears of joy. Our oldest son Drew just gleamed with the thought of it all. After telling our sons it was time to start sharing our news with family members. Each time, there were tears of joy. Wow, I thought, God is really going to make this happen.
In April 2011, is when we started the paperwork that would set this whole process in motion. We chose to use Holt International as our adoption agency. As we started our dossier, I could not believe all of the hoops to jump through and forms to be filled out. It was literally mind boggling. If it was not for Lisa, I don't think I could have kept up with it all. We both had to sit down and list all of the special needs we were willing to accept. Talk about an extremely difficult task...how hard it is to say what you are willing to accept or not. Then started our home study which was difficult. That asked some hard personal questions that seemed a bit much, but after all that was complete I could see why they needed this type of information.
After several months of waiting and trying to figure out how the whole process works, I happen to get a monthly email from Holt about what is going on. I would get these every so often which would cause me to check on their website for new children that they had received that might match our criteria. I actually came across two children that seemed to meet everything that we had agreed to. So Lisa contacted Holt just to inquire why these two seemed to meet our criteria and yet we had not heard anything. They emailed us back and stated that is was merely an oversight on their part and in fact did match up with our paperwork. We asked for the information on both children and ended up picking EmmaLin to adopt into our family. We were sooo excited. Now, more paperwork, ugghhh.
We had very little information and pictures of her. As weeks passed, I found that I would tear up from time to time just thinking about her over there and could not get my hands on her. I found a Yahoo Group on the internet that was made up of parents that had adopted from the orphanage where she was being cared for. I joined and soon after got inquiries about EmmaLin in case they might have some pictures of her from when they were there picking up their child. Low and behold there was a family that had adopted last year that did in fact have some pictures of her. I was ecstatic on my find. Not too long after this another email from the group told of a way to possibly get more pictures of your child. If you put in her chinese name in the chinese characters you might find more pictures and blogs about her. This time I was extremely lucky to download 50+ pictures of her off of the internet because of a college class that was visiting the orphanage and writing blogs on their findings. They seemed to visit her on a regular basis and was able to see two videos of them taking her out of the orphanage and having a birthday party for her as she was turning 4. Oh how extremely hard this is getting to not be able to go get her now. I just have to take it a day at a time.
Timing and money played integral roles in whether our boys would be able to join us on our trip to pick her up. As things stand now, we will be traveling in July while they are out of school and through the support of friends and family, especially Lisa's parents, our boys are able to make the trip to China with us. Oh how we want time to fly.
-Chris
