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You don't
choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are
to them. ~Desmond Tutu
Tuesday, December 1, 2009. It starts as such a normal day. Ryann is finishing lunch, and I go check email quickly.
Yeah!!! There are 2 emails from our agency with 2 girls’
files to look at. I grab the phone and call Aron. He’s
going to come home… this is too much to figure out over
the phone. We open the first email, and there is Guo Yin
Feng! Is this our daugther? I dunno?! A quick scan of her
pictures and medical and developmental reports, then on to
the next email. This little one is precious as well, but
we just don’t feel that she is Leah. It’s a good thing
that we don’t feel torn between two, because just figuring
out what to do with one is hard enough. By the way,
where’s Ryann? Oh, playing quietly, thank you love. Back
to Yin Feng. There is something about her, but is she
Leah? This is the hardest decision ~ ever! God… we’ll take
that neon sign now! Isn’t it Ryann’s naptime? Okay, now
where were we? Oh yeah, is this Leah? I dunno?! We have
about 3 hours to let the doctor read over her file, get
back to us and discuss, and write a Letter of Intent to
email to our agency if we want to adopt her. What? 3
hours! Relax Jenn, we just need to write the letter in
case we decide she’s the one, because they need time to
have it translated into Chinese. We have all the way until
tomorrow to decide for sure. Oh, phew! Wait… 28 hours? Is
it just me, or is this crazy?! We forward her file to
Pittsburgh’s expert doctor in the area of medical issues
in International Adoption. And so the next 3 hours we
spend on the phone with the doctor (in which she feels
very good about her… just an isolated issue with the
leg/foot, and not part of a syndrome… good sign right?),
praying, on the phone with friends begging for more
prayers, praying on the phone with family (Kate… you’re
awesome!), and am I missing anything? Oh yeah, more
praying! We decide to write the Letter of Intent, knowing
that we still have loads of time to make a final decision.
Oh wait, no we don’t. Isn’t Kyra going to be getting off
the bus soon? Our neighbor Cristen to the rescue! Back to
praying! Wait… is naptime over already? Okay, now Kyra and
Ryann are looking with us, and they like her… is that a
sign? Can we please just fast forward!!!
Okay, I’ll stop the comedic recap. You’re welcome! But I
know we probably looked like a 3-ring circus to God, and
anyone else around us. We were over complicating the whole
thing. The funny thing is, now that I’m writing this with
hindsight, I think we did know, but we were so caught up
in the fast timing and specifics, that it was too hard for
us to know that we knew. It felt like such a huge
decision. She was in essence, a total stranger. But after
relaxing and sleeping, we actually let our agency know
first thing in the morning, not even taking the full time…
how’s that for irony. I would love to say that as soon as
we saw her, the angels were singing and we knew, and then
we popped the champagne! But that’s not true. We
definitely felt drawn to her, but our heads were spinning.
I think the bottom line is that there was nothing that
felt wrong about her. I’m sure God was kind of chuckling
at us, because He knew this was Leah, and He knew that we
knew deep down, but we couldn’t totally see it yet. I
honestly don’t know how anyone can do this without having
Christ in the center! He’s the only one who got us through
that crazy day. And now… all I can say is that I now
chuckle thinking back to that day, because where I once
saw a stranger and a question mark, I now see my daughter,
period! No doubt and no regret. And we haven’t even met
her yet! |
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