HOPE

First of all, I want to thank you for taking your time to read this blog. I will give you a heads up; It's Long. :) But my HOPE is that you will read it and pray with us and pass this on to anyone that comes to your mind who is looking to adopt. This blog is all about one thing and that is finding a home for "Hope". We gave her the name "Ashlyn Hope" six years ago, when we first felt God stirring our hearts for the thousands of Chinese daughters that are abandoned every day. I watched a documentary called, "The Lost Girls of China", by Lisa Ling, for National Geographic Explorer and I've never been the same. Some time after I looked up the meaning of the name "Ashlyn" and discovered that it means, "vision of God". She is exactly that...
I asked my husband to pray about adopting one of these little BABIES and he said he would. At that time, I was pregnant with our third child. We decided to put our desire to adopt on the back burner and wait on the Lord to reveal His will in His timing for us to proceed.
3 years later we decided to look into it. We felt the door shut almost immediately when we came to the realization that we had too much debt. We know that God is a God of order. First things first... So by the grace of God, we paid off our debt, and decided to give it another go this past December (the 17th to be exact:). When we first thought of adopting from China, the wait for a healthy baby was only 1 year. At this time it is now 4+ years. We decided we didn't want to wait that long and that there are wonderful older children waiting that need homes too. A friend of mine introduced me to a blog and a website; both advocates for "waiting children". These waiting children have mild-severe birth defects. We went looking for a toddler with a cleft lip/palate. I saw a few sweet faces that matched our profile, but one precious girl grabbed my heart immediately. I kept scrolling down, looking for a toddler, but as cute as they were, I was already attached to Hope. As I read her bio I fell even more in love with this sweet girl.
She is now 12 years old, as of February 18. Her file is out of date as it is from 2009, but this is what it says: "She loves to fix her hair and be beautiful like other girls. She loves to sing and dance and play games. She loves the littler children and will teach them games. She will share the good things with others and help the children who get into trouble. The younger children like her very much." I was immediately hooked. We now have 4 children, ages 11 and under. I thought, "How perfect, she will come live with us and love our family because we have lots of little children!" :) When I showed my very sensible husband her picture that night, he said, "That's our daughter, go get her." Sooooooooooo not like him. So, I requested her medical file from the agency and off we went. What we found was even more affirming to us. She has (some) freckles! All of our children have freckles. I've never seen a Chinese person with freckles before. Her actual Chinese name (I will leave undisclosed for her security) means, "The HOPE to be a kind person". Coincidence? I don't believe in coincidence.
She was abandoned at the orphanage (where she still lives) at age 3. She came there with the cleft lip/palate repaired. This is rare in abandoned orphans. My guess is that her parents had to give her away due to the one child policy...maybe another child was born into her family. We'll never know, but these facts are promising for her future connection to another family. That and the fact that she is an obvious overcomer in that she is able to love the little children in her orphanage inspite of her huge loss of her own family. One morning I was reading my Bible and praying and I came across a verse in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 that says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves have been comforted. " Right then God spoke to me and said, "I have been her comfort. I am with her and I love her. I have a plan for her life." These were just a few confirmations that we felt were open doors for us to proceed. I had heard the controversy of adopting out of birth order, but I had never been given any concrete situations, so we went on praying and waiting on the Lord to close the door on this if it was out of His will. We shared this with our children and they were so happy and excited. We discussed with the two oldest the concern we had for them "losing" their place in the family line and they did not mind. We continued to pray and wait. We did not have the finances to send in our initial fees yet to lock in on her file, so we just said, "If and when this is God's will, He will be our provider." In the meantime, I had joined a yahoo group of familes who have adopted from her orphanage. It has been such an amazing little window into her world. I had one family send pictures from the orphanage that they had received upon adopting their little girl last year. He sent them so we could look for Hope in them. Sure enough, in one of the pictures, she was holding his little girl in her lap!!! Coincidence? Nope. Another lady sent me some more pictures. She was in these pictures as well. She was the only one looking directly at the camera. When I told her which child Hope was she was so happy. She actually had an encounter with her. She had taken her daughter back to China last year to see where she came from and was able to take a tour of the orphanage. At lunch time all the little ones were out in the courtyard having lunch. Hope and another little boy her age were coming home from school for lunch. As she approached, she ran up to the orphanage director and the director put her hands on Hope's face and they had a loving conversation. Then she smiled and ran up the stairs. She said that she was a lovely girl; very pretty, happy, and animated. This was so satisfying for my curiosity. I looked at it as just another confirmation and a huge blessing. When you adopt from China it is unusual to have this much information beforehand.
On January 27th we received a forgotten commission check for twice the amount my husband had thought it to be. The next day we sent over our financial statements and our initial fee to our agency. They locked in on her file for us that day. She was almost ours! The next weeks crawled by as we waited and prayed for China to accept us. We worried because we didn't meet the requirements EXACTLY and China is a very particular country. Every I is dotted and every T is crossed and they make very few exceptions. On February 17th we got our approval. When I read the email from our agency, I immediately dropped to my knees crying and praising God for His favor on us. He is so good, isn't He? We celebrated her birthday that evening, as it was already the 18th in China. So fun!
We started telling everyone and hoping to make our trip to China sometime around Christmas 2011. We went for our physicals and started filling out paperwork for our dossier. Once again we were at a stopping point, waiting on the Lord to provide the finances. We have no doubt that the Lord can and does move mountains. He is our Great Provider. From the very start I had two categories in my mind: category A was what I could handle as far as adjustments and challenges are concerned, and category B were the things that I told the Lord that I just knew we could not take on. I remember taking that first check to the post office and praying in the car, "Lord, You know my heart and You know my limitations. Please block this from continuing on if this could in any way be harmful to our family."

The evening of her birthday, the 18th, I got an email from a friend telling me about another local family she new who had just adopted a 13-year-old girl from China. I asked for her email address and contacted her right away. We were not at all prepared for her story. I had been in touch with several families who had adopted from China, but none that had adopted older kids like Hope and none that had adopted out of birth order. (My one model family was from another state and they were just having minor adjustments; nothing shocking.) This lady invited me to join a yahoo group of Christian families who had adopted children ages 10 and up from China. As I read their stories my heart sank. I shared it with my husband and we were terrified. I asked for advice from the group... told them about us and what we were looking at doing. They were so generous and so gracious to share the details of their experiences. Many stories of fear based rage... These girls have just been through so much. My heart was broken for these familes and mostly for their children. Some of these adopted girls have treated their new siblings just terribly; dividing up the Chinese children in the home from the biological children and just flat out disregarding them all-together. They do not know how "family" works. We heard stories of knives being pulled, windows being kicked out... fits of rage that set in sometimes a year or so after being home from China. *Now, just to make a disclaimer here*, we KNOW that there are just as many wonderful stories out there as the scary ones, but what we started feeling was that it might be too big of a risk to our biological children. There are no guarantees. I'm also very certain that we are not equipped to handle most of the scenarios that we have read about. I know that for some of you, you might be wondering where is our faith in all of this. Why would God open up so many doors, only to close them so abruptly? We took several days to pray about this and talk with wise council. Many of these families who are like-minded Christ followers, were telling us that we were wise to put it off and pray and wait. They all said that they knew these girls were meant to be theirs, but had they known on the forefront what they know now, they may have not done it, simply because of the strain it has put on the other children in the home and their marriage and finances. My marriage and my children are my first priority. Our oldest is heading right into adolescence, and this past week we felt that come on in full force. What are you trying to tell us, Lord? Is this a test? Is this a no? Maybe it's an entirely different plan than we expected altogether...

A couple of weeks ago James MacDonald (Walk in the Word Ministries) spoke at our church. He said he had prayed that God would give him a word for someone there that day. He said, "For sure, for sure this is for someone here today." I looked at my husband and said, "I know what he's going to say." Don't ask me how I knew. It had to have been from the Lord. He then quoted a verse that's been rolling around in my head ever since we tried to start our adoption process 3 years ago... Habakkuk 2:3 "For the VISION (God's will) is yet for the appointed time, it hastens toward the goal and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it. It will certainly come, It will not delay." I looked at my husband and said, "I knew it!" I knew he was going to share that verse. Even as I type this, I get goosebumps all over again. He also said that when God gives you a word not to doubt it.
I am not doubting that God's will will prevail. He is in control and we want to be obedient. As of right now, we are not proceeding. This decision has come after MUCH prayer and research and council from other adoptive familes. We are going to do is advocate for Hope to find a family. Maybe that is our role. Maybe our family is not the right family for HER. Ideally she should be the youngest child in the family, or an only child. This would be the advise from the experts on birth order. She will age out at 14 -years-old. If someone doesn't claim her within the year (because is takes about a year to finalize the adoption) she will never find a family. We are not exactly sure what this means for her future. But we can not let this happen. She WILL find her forever family. Maybe in this process we will discover that she IS meant to be ours afterall.
My heart is broken. I go from moment to moment with different emotions. Sometimes I'm thankful that we were given this information and council, and sometimes I am crushed at the thought of never kissing her sweet face, or looking at her eye to eye, or just KNOWING her. In my heart I still hold fast to the knowledge that God can and does move mountains. He knows the plans He has for our lives, plans to give us HOPE and a future. So we will call upon His name and lift her up to Him and allow Him to move while we wait.
Please pray for Hope. Pray that God will provide the perfect family for her very soon.
If you feel that the Lord might be leading you to adoption of an older child, please email me at rebecca@mattmckee.com for more information.