Adoption Update, Part 3 (of 4)

Then, Sunday evening, November 8^th, we got an email from the woman at our local home study agency which read, “Hi Amy, You’re not going to believe this, but our partner agency has Rayna's file.”  That was as far as I got in the email before I started tearing up.  Through the tears I read that they even had a little update on her as well as a couple videos.

The really amazing part about this is that there so many agencies that could have had her file – so many.  I had been checking the individual lists of several of the larger agencies for the last couple of weeks, to no avail. And the one that happened to request her was the one our home study agency partners with!

I could barely speak, but told Pete to come read the email and watch the videos with me.  I didn’t let him see how emotional I was feeling because I didn’t want him to be swayed by me.  We had argued a lot about various issues that day and I knew he was wanting to “fix” things – his default mode – and I didn’t want him to say she was cute and wonderful just because that’s how I felt.

About an hour later, with no prompting from me, he told me we should pursue her.  I thought he would at least want to sleep on it, but he didn’t!

(Here’s the really cool part – IT WAS ORPHAN SUNDAY!  We had had the kids watch a sweet video about adoption that afternoon and all of them had come away from it with a greater desire to adopt. I had no idea such good news would be coming that evening.)

Even though it was late Sunday now, I leaped out of bed and went over to the computer to email the agency back.  It was very hard to sleep that night… I was up from 2-4 am, I think.

… And then, more waiting.  All the next day we waited for the agencies involved to communicate with each other and get back to us about our next steps.  As I waited and waited with my phone continually at my side, I realized that the motives of my heart were not so good. 

I was terrified that once again she would be snatched from us and I found myself thinking, “Worst case scenario would be that she gets matched with someone else while we’re delayed!”  Almost immediately every time I thought this, I would follow it up with, “Wait a minute, Self, that’s NOT a worst case scenario!  That would mean an orphan has been placed in a family… Isn’t that the goal here??” 

But somehow this girl was different.  All along, for lo these many months and years, as I had scrolled through all the waiting children on the various web sites, my heart would be sad and I would pray that they would please find families.  But this girl didn’t feel like just an orphan to me.  She felt like MINE.

But still we had to wait.  I thought it was interesting that our Bible reading that morning with the kids was about Isaac and Rebekah in Genesis.  In the chapter we read, Isaac prayed to God because Rebekah was barren, and God gave them twin sons.  But when we added up the math on the ages, we realized that between the time they got married and the time the sons were born 20 years had gone by!  That is a long time to be praying and waiting for a baby.  It was definitely a family pattern… Isaac's father Abraham and Sarah waited much longer than that even for their promised son.  Strange how God made so many wait so long for children…   I guess I could wait one more day.

But that one day turned into another and another as various questions had to be answered.  It felt like I spent just about every hour of every day that week waiting – either for an email or a phone call – from a doctor or an agency.

Meanwhile, we received some news that I thought might be the end of the whole journey for us.  Since her file had just become listed with the new agency, they weren’t willing to just let our current agency have her file (so we could adopt her) until they gave their families the full 90 day window of opportunity.

So we had two choices.  We could wait 90 days, and then if she still wasn’t adopted by another family, our current agency could have her file so we could pursue her.  Or, we could switch agencies now and apply for her.  This would mean walking away from our current agency – to whom we had already paid a LOT of money.

What should we do??

I'll post Part 4 tomorrow...  Part 4 here