Thursday, August 16, 2012

A night for sorrows

Almost six years ago my husband and I decided to start our journey to adopt from China.  I would like to think that mentally, I had been preparing myself for what that would look like as best I could.  Considering the length of the wait, I should have been well exercised in mind control.  All of us who adopt from China know there is a large chunk of our child's past that we will never know about.

Last night I decided I wanted to spend some time as best I could with Wei Gongzhe.  Maybe I just wanted to feel a little closer to him.  I snuggled myself into bed and combed through his paperwork, trying to put a visual image to the harsh black and white descriptive words and checkboxes I was reading.  I was trying to make them fit into some animated understanding of who he was, what he was like, and what he liked to do.  My eyes fell on his birthdate.  3/5/11.  I have known it by heart since our agency spoke it over the phone the day we received his referral.  I have mulled it around in my mind hoping that we would have him home long before his second birthdate.  I have read over it many times as I have read through his paperwork, as I was doing last evening.  For some reason, last night was different.  When my eyes fell on the day he was born, I felt a sorrow wash over me as I realized, I didn't know what I was doing on that day.  

Unfortunately, I have become much more organized since being a Mom.  I very quickly get rid of things when they have no "foreseeable" use any longer. After transferring any important information to 2012, I threw my 2011 calendar in the garbage.  It may be a bit antiquated in these days of modern technology but our entire family life goes on our paper flip calendar.  With deep regret I began to realize that I had thrown away a connection to our son when I threw away that part of our family's history.  How could I not know what I was doing the day he was born?  The day that would mark a huge change in my history?

To my surprise, this led to a massive display of sorrow into my pillow last night.  I felt so deeply the lost connection of these 17 months we have not been together.  I'm sure I join many adoptive parents in these same tears across the ages.  I always knew I would not know a portion of my child's history but now that I know that child, it suddenly seemed I could not bear this sorrow.  It seemed if only I could have been in the right place on that day, perhaps he could have been placed directly into my arms.  Ridiculous, really to be thinking this.  I've had so much time to prepare myself for this moment.  Shouldn't I be able to handle these emotions without this deep sense of loss?

As I lay there last night, my tears spent, God laid his word on my heart and brought it to my mind:

My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book were all written
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them.
How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Psalm 139:15-17

There is a written record of all our days.  I may not be able to recapture all the pieces of Wei Gongzhe or my own history, but I know the One that can.  One who loves us even more than we will ever love each other.  More than my immoral, earthly and imperfect body can ever do.  I know these nights of sorrow into my pillow are far from over, but I know I can trust the one who gave me my history and my future! 

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

The long awaited and unexpected referral

It came.  Quietly and with little fanfare, our referral was sent to our inbox.  Our process of adoption has been nothing like what I was expecting when we first started nearly 6 years ago.  No close watch of the trends as we neared our Log In Date (LID).  No call from our agency to tell us we had been matched.  No sitting down side by side with my husband as we together opened up the email that contained information on "our child", the one China had carefully and precisely matched us to.  No, the introduction of Wei Gongzhe was tentative at best. 

We had resigned ourselves to not adopting within the 2012 year. We even have a nice long vacation planned as we did not think we needed to hold onto my husband's paid time off any longer this year.  In fact, it was due to this vacation that I even reached out to our agency that day.  We added ourselves to the "waiting children's" list this past March but had still requested a girl with a young and limiting age range at 0-15 months.  When I called, I mentioned that we would be traveling soon and likely be out of range of a cell phone or internet so wanted to find out how we would handle that should we be matched in that 10 day period.  We discussed the possibilities and then moved on to a question that started innocent enough.  "Would you be open to a boy?"  We'd been down that road before.  I love being a Mother to our biological son, but we have built our brains around having a girl for the last 6 years.  I have a closet full of girls clothes.  My husband has read, "Interviewing Your Daughters Date" by Dennis Rainey.  (Hey, you can never be prepared enough for that one so we started early!)  We had her name picked out.  Our child has been "she" in our household for a very long time and I have been preparing my son for his new sister!  (Did I mention I have a closet full of girls clothes....each with special meaning to me as we have waited?)  I told our agency to forward his information along and I would show my husband.  Innocent enough.  I opened the email and while his beautiful brown eyes captured me the moment I looked at them, I resigned myself to knowing my husband would likely want to hold out for a girl.  I wasn't about to let myself fall in love with his picture as I have been very good over the last several years to protect my heart from disappointment in our adoption. 

I called my husband at work and asked him to take a look and we decided we would talk about it that evening.  After we both arrived home from our workday and had our family fed, we sat across from each other and said, "Well, what do you think?"  He was everything we'd asked for in our paperwork, he just wasn't a girl.  We decided we would call the International Adoption Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital to have Dr. Mary Staat review his file and see where that trail led us.  I called a friend from church and asked that he would pray for us for the next couple days.  Then, we waited two more days.  When the call came from Dr. Staat early that morning, I already knew God had done a work in me.  She had glowing things to say about his referral and I could see that God had protected this child in the time he has been away from us as I have so often prayed in the last 6 years.  I could finally feel that ever so cautiously, I was giving myself permission to bond.  We allowed ourselves to look at each other and smile for the first time.  It did not seem possible our wait could be over.  Sometimes it seemed it defined who we were and we could not separate ourselves from it.  The next day my husband printed his picture which was placed up on the fridge and we were sharing our good news with friends and family.  As incredible and life changing as this entire process has been and no doubt will continue to be, God has allowed me to open my heart to the unthinkable, unexpected and amazing facets of obedience.

His referral came with little fanfare.  Sounds like someone else I know.  Jesus came silently one night to a young, inexperienced couple in a dirty stable.  Few knew the Savior of the world had come.  Then there is Elijah, pouting in a cave.  God placed before him a strong rock breaking wind, an earthquake, and finally a fire.  But God was not found in any of those.  He was found in the still, small voice that followed and called Elijah out. (I kings 19:11-13) Perhaps it's not much different in the way our soon to be son came into the world.  Born one night with a special circumstance that would not allow his parents to care for him.  They decided to leave him in a place where he would soon be found and taken care of.  Quietly he entered our world and quietly he has entered mine.