The road to Tyson, Part 2

September 2008 would prove to be a life changing month.

After submitting my special needs (sn) checklist to the agency, I found Rainbow Kids. As I was looking, there was a little girl on there with a sn that was one we checked off on our list. As fate would have it, she was with our agency! So I took a shot in the dark and emailed our agency. The next day I got an email back to call the agency. We never discussed that little girl, but it sure got the ball rolling. I learned about the shared list and how it worked. The coordinator asked about our gender preference, and we said either. She said, "Are you sure?" I couldn't imagine why not. Our homestudy was written for either gender. She said we might even matched in September! Our I-800A was already at USCIS, so we should be logged in (LID) to China by the end of November, and travel by April if we were matched this month. Wow!!!

So each night I wondered if the shared list came out. The next day I'd be teaching, with one eye at my computer seeing if I had that email I had been waiting for. Finally one morning, there it was: Call the agency. We had been matched with a little boy! I don't want to go into the specifics on his sn, but we thought it was one we could handle. But it was worded very strangely. Nevertheless, we were so excited and began to write our letter of intent. I also had to stay after school and write sub plans because the next day happened to be our finger print appt in Seattle.

That night, something was bothering me about the wording of his sn. I began to research synonyms for one of the words, and I suddenly had a heat running from my neck to my spine. If it was in fact what I thought it was, we could not handle it. We slept on it, and when I woke up I knew we couldn't bring this child to our family. My husband agreed 100%. To go from thinking you've found your child to letting him go is so gut wrenching. My heart just ached that we couldn't accept this referral. I was very angry with God. Why would he place this child's file in front of us, knowing full well that we could not handle his need?

So we dropped K-bear off at school, and off we went to Seattle. Our appt wasn't until 2, so we decided to go to IKEA and where ever else the road took us that day. We left emails and voice mails with our agency saying we could not adopt this child. On our way, our agency called us back and told us it was OK to not accept the referral, and it was actually very common. They asked us to stop by the office because they would show us how the shared list worked. Through my tears, I said OK.

If you are reading this, and you have declined a referral, you know how hard it is. It sucks. I thank the Lord that I had that day off for finger prints because there is no way I would have been able to teach that day. One thing we did know now, it was very clear what kind of need we could handle and wanted to take on. We had been nervous about cleft lip/palate, but now, it was a need we were very interested in. It was a need we knew would fit with our family. We were still open to others, but for some reason, I always came back to this need. I had read the cleft palate story and had done my research on it.

So here we were, feeling like something had died within us. Our family had 4 people for a short time, and now it was back to three. The only word I can describe it as is empty. The roller coaster of emotions in 24 hours, from the elation of the referral to the sadness of declining the referral, all within a day. I was literally ill. We knew God did this for a reason, but why?

Until next time...