Our Journey to Chen

Our Journey to Chen....

We were a perfectly content family of three. We couldn't have felt more blessed and satisfied with our lives. We discovered early in our relationship that children would be impossible and then the impossible happened. God gave us Aaron. The pregnancy was scary but beautiful. Aaron brings great joy to our life. Long ago, however, a seed was planted in my heart to adopt some day. I'm not sure where it came from but it came to life the more I watched Aaron playing alone. Don't get me wrong, its great being Aaron's playmate but its not the same for him. He began asking and then our hearts began longing. We researched many options to adopt. China seemed to fit our desires the best. And so it began... the exciting yet annoying archeology of our life. Digging up every major and minor piece of our life to compose a story of our ability or inability to be parents. We even combed the pages of Adoption For Dummies to make sure we didn't miss anything that we should be prepared for. We reviewed the costs of many agencies and their overall reputation for success. I literally had to take days off of work to spend time gathering information to prove we were who we said we were. The home study was a strange series of events that left us wondering if we were forcing our destiny where God did not want us to go. Sure, we enjoyed having the opportunity to talk about ourselves and how wonderful our family is and show off the tiny little house we have worked so hard at making comfortable and fun, but we had everything stop when our 1st social worker got fired. Then we had to find another social worker. He was fine except he kept misplacing our paperwork. Upon completing our home study in Oct 07 (we started it all in Jan 07) he informed us that his office was closing and he was out of a job! Our home study was going to be "sitting in a box somewhere." China received our dossier (that's all that paperwork in a small manila envelope) and filed it away December 25th, 2007 where it was not going to even be looked at again until 3-6 years later. We had no idea it would take that long. When we started, the referral time was 18 months. We waited and waited and decided to pursue a special needs child as this was originally what we had planned anyway but our home study agency encouraged us not to. July 19, 2008 we got a call and email with a profile of a child. I tried to open it at work but it wouldn't work. Jim had already seen it but was waiting for my response. It took no more than a second to fall in love. She is beautiful! We had reviewed other children's files but did not have this feeling. We hoped we would. We knew it was meant to be. I was surprised and nervous about Jim's reaction to her special need but he was so excited that I knew she was right for us. Chen was born with a congenital arm deficit of her left arm. It is a small appendage that is approximately 1-2 inches below where her shoulder is. It appears to have a small finger on it. Aaron's reaction was more of my worry. His first words were "OH my goodness! She's so cute! When can we go get her?" Even in her pictures she seemed spunky, content, but also had that longing in her face. So here we are. Its so surreal. I feel like I'm playing house again. Our lives are ready to change. We couldn't feel more blessed.