We are expecting.
Okay, maybe not in the traditional sense of the word. I will not be checking into a hospital nine months from now to give birth a third time. But we are most certainly expecting. She will be a girl, she will be Chinese, and she is already ours.
People will ask, why would you adopt when you can just have another one? There are two reasons we have chosen this path. The first is God's call on our hearts through scripture. "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans..." (James 1:27) We are directly commanded by God to take care of those who have no parents. Giving a home to a child who has already been born and who has been abandoned is a natural answer to that command.
The second reason is this: We look around our home and there is a sense that someone is missing. And interestingly enough, whenever I pictured Tim and I having children before we had our boys, I never pictured a girl who looked like us as part of our family. When we were expecting Micah and Liam, I had fleeting thoughts that both of our boys were girls, but there wasn't any surprise when they weren't. It just wasn't meant to be that way. We were meant to open our homes to a daughter in a different kind of way.
Tim and I have been talking about adoption for a long time. We have talked about all of the different domestic and international options, explored foster care, and asked people we knew who had already adopted about their experiences, all in an effort to try and determine the best path for our family. We have ruled out several options because of potential negative impact on the boys. We received a fantastic agency recommendation from a long-ago friend who has already adopted two daughters from China. We met with that agency and immediately felt at home, felt that it was the right place, the right connection, and the right path for us to take.
Because the first question everyone asks, including us, is "How long will this process take?", we will let you know that it will most likely take the better part of two years to be complete. It could be a lot less time, it could be more time. Once all of our paperwork is complete, which should take about six months, then we will wait until the agency lets us know that they have found our daughter. Easier said than done!
What we do know for sure is this: she will be a special needs child. Right now, China has a huge waiting list of people who are looking for "healthy" babies to adopt. The wait is five years at minimum and may be closer to seven.
At the same time, China has an abundance of children with "special needs" who are in need of a loving home now. These needs run the gamut of mild to severe, superficial to life-threatening. The agency gives each couple seeking to adopt a form called a "Medical Checklist", and Tim and I have completed it. That form allows you as a couple to tell the agency, and China, what you feel that you can and cannot handle as a family in terms of the needs a child may have.
Some may ask, "How can you consider bringing a child with special needs into your family when you already have so much going on and two other kids to think about?" The answer is this: there will always be a home for a healthy child. There will not always be a home for a child who has different abilities. We know what we can handle. God knows what we can handle, and this little girl will be an example of what we already know. We know that we are all imperfect, and are only made perfect in the sight of God. She will be perfect to us. Just as we love our boys no matter what happens, and we would have loved them no matter what ailments they might have arrived with, we will love her. And we want our boys to understand that you don't love someone because they seem perfect - the bottom line is that no one is. You love someone because of who they are, who God has created them to be, and who they are to you. What better lesson can their little sister teach them than tolerance and respect and love?
There are so many things that we do not know. We do not know who she is, if she has even been born yet or not, but we know that God does, and he is already watching over her.
We do not know her name, but we know that God already calls her his own and knows how many hairs will be on her head.
We do not know when she will officially become a member of the Black family, but we know God never works too fast or too slow so we trust that his timing is perfect, and he will give her to us at just the right time - and give us the right amount of patience for the wait until she is here.
We do not know what physical and emotional challenges she will bring with her, but God knows all about her, having knit her together in her birth mother's womb, and lovingly created her to be unique.
There are so many things we do not know, but we take our comfort and strength in our faith that God knows all. He knows about our precious girl, our boys' sister and our daughter, who will one day be such a part of our family that we will not be able to imagine what our lives were like before she was with us.
If you want to share this journey with us, please feel free to check back to this blog. We will update it as often as we can. It might be a little different format, especially for those of you who read our other blog. This one will be in the form of letters to our daughter; we want her to know that, just as we did with her brothers, we already love her, we are already yearning for the day she is in our arms, and we want her to have a record of this amazing journey from beginning to end - the journey that will bring her home.
Thank you in advance for your prayers and your support. We covet them, and know that we will need them, not just now, but in the months to come.
Love,
Kelly and Tim
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