We started to tell our family and friends, but I felt like you do before you tell everyone you are pregnant...we had a sweet, sweet secret and it was wonderful.
Of course as soon as you say "Yes" to a file there is paperwork. We wrote our Letter of Intent to China, telling the CCCWA (Center for Chinese Children...something...Waiting...Adoption) why we would be a good fit for Ying Hang and why we could handle his medical needs. We filled out our forms and my faithful friend Michelle notarized more documents. Again, there is so much paperwork with international adoption. No morning sickness, just lots of paperwork, (lots and lots and mountains of paperwork) and I think I gained some "baby weight" with stress eating. Ha. We worked earnestly collection all of our documentation and sending it to the secretary of state, then to be certified at the Chinese embassy...then to our agency, and then to China. It is a looong, long process.
I put together a photo book with pictures of our family and wrote a little letter, using simple sentences about what our family likes to do...."We go hiking," "We play with trains", "We have a garden,"...etc. It was so interesting to dream about the Nannies showing the book to "Hang Hang".
*Interesting note: in China last names are first...so An Ying Hang would be last name An, first name Ying Hang. Children in an orphange are named using part of the city they were found in. An Ying Hang is from An Yang City. My friend Joey, who was an exchange student here for two years said that her family would call her by her full name, including last name. *
Joey helped me greatly by translating our little photo book into Chinese. She was so meticulous and the writing was so beautiful. I made a copy so that Josiah can have it when he is older.
Anyway, a month after accepting the referral for An Ying Hang (Josiah) we were in the middle of busy-ness with adoption paperwork and busy-ness with homeschooling and busy-ness with church and friends and just LIFE, when I got a call from the agency. I thought it was about Josiah.
But, it was not. It was a gal from the waiting child department with another file for us. Another little boy. "Oh," I said, "but we are already matched!" And she said that we had said we would be open to adopting two. I laughed. I thought our hands were full, but I didn't know what else to say except that I would like to see the file.
She sent it, and he was adorable. He was so big and sweet. His file said he had developmental delays and polydactyly. He was 2 and a half, and also in the Henan province. I stared at his picture after the kids went to bed, and I thought, he sure looks cute and I wonder who will get to adopt him.
I texted my hubby and he texted back, "Ha."
He came home, exhausted from a 13 hour day. We both were so tired that we didn't even talk about the sweet boy, and just went to bed.
The next morning I needed to tell the agency if we wanted a week to check out Zheng Zi Rui's file and think about it seriously. It was 8 in the morning and I openend my computer, the kids were eating breakfast and I went to email back, "No, thank you," and found myself (I think this was from the Lord) telling her, "Sure, we would love to look at the file." I felt strangely that we needed to at least look at the file before saying no.
And so that day we read through the file, and I watched the video of Zi Rui for the first time.
He was so chubby and sweet, walking all by himself, navigating around a toy, sucking on sweets and interacting with two nannies. He followed directions and was just beautiful and funny and sweet. I thought he was lovely, but of course thought that adopting two would be crazy. That wasn't what we set out to do, and so I thought it would most likely still be a "no."
I didn't even tell anyone for three days...maybe four.
My parents watched our kids that weekend while we went to a training and on the drive there my husband began to talk about it...like it was a reality. He explained that maybe God was giving us a sweet blessing and opportunity to be a blessing. This little boy was available for adoption due to an extra thumb...which seemed crazy. I felt incredulous, and yet hopeful at the same time...and Joe kept talking about it like it was a possibility. And so we decided to send his file to Children's to be evaluated like we did with Josiah's file.
In doing so we took a leap of faith. To have a file evaluated is $500 (gulp) dollars. I told Joe that even if Children's report was positive, I still wanted the right to say no, even after spending all that money, if we felt lead to say no. He agreed and we sent the file.
We did get counsel from other adoptive families and our pastor and our close friends, but it still felt like jumping off into the unknown. I wrote multiple pro/con lists. How could I have the energy to bring home two? My dear friend had adopted little Reed and Grace a few years previously, and we loved their story, but...but, but. I am not my dear friend Laura. I am not super mom. The boys would all be VERY close in age, and we wanted to do what was best for the kids we already had at home. We prayed, and prayed. It felt like God was opening a new place inside of us, giving us a bigger hope, and a bigger dream. We looked at our house...it was big enough, our medical coverage was good, the fact that we have a good income, and amazing support...all lead us to hoping we could adopt little Zi Rui. Joe began to feel like it would be faithless to say no, that it would not be right. That we COULD give him a home. Joe believed that God was asking him to disregard the added financial cost, the added cost of self-sacrifice, and say "Yes" to this beautiful boy, too.
I remember walking last summer on Laura's farm and her laughing to me that we could get "two, too!" and I remember inwardly balking and outwardly laughing, "No way!" And I thought about that the whole time we were considering Zi Rui. But my heart and my head eventually reconciled as we prayerful considered this sweet boy. As I wrestled with the pro and con list, with myself--with not being enough--I wrestled with God's goodness, and His sufficiency. Was He really enough for me? Could He really provide and lead me? Was He able? Could I trust Him to work in me to love another child? I believe He is able. I believe He will provide, and that though I am NOT enough...His power will work in me, and "His power is made perfect in my weakness."
One thing we had to consider when accepting the referral for Zi Rui was that we did not want An Ying Hang's adoption to be delayed by even one day, or one week. And yet, because we were at a certain point in our adoption process, and our Dossier paperwork still had a few weeks left before it was sent to China, there was a little tiny window.
Literally it was a two week window in which we could get matched with another child and not delay travel for Ying Hang. And God saw fit to send us our little boy. Both boys are in the same province, Henan, but not the same city. Zheng Zi Rui is in Zhengzhou (Jin-Jo).
Children's report was positive. They looked at his x-rays, his bloodwork, the written reports and especially the video and they said that his hand looked just fine and we would pursue repairing his hand if we chose to adopt him in the first year. They said it looked like there was "a light on", he looked happy and was growing, and was following directions. They said he looked like he had "delays typical for institutional care" and they expected he would make great progress when home.
And so we found ourselves buying matching shirts, creating another care package, making another photo book, writing another Letter of Intent and smiling at God's sweet story that He was and is writing. We were surprised at ourselves and at what God was doing...We said "Yes!"
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