Our Adoption Journey from Texas to China
Friday, December 26, 2014
China, Here We Come!
We received our Travel Approval today!! This was very exciting, and a bit unexpected, due to the timing. I knew that the offices in China were scheduled to shutdown for almost a week starting Dec. 27, and I thought the last possible opportunity for us to get approval before the shutdown would be during the night of the 25th-26th (which is the 26th in China). I kept checking and rechecking my email, hoping to hear something from my agency. By 1:00 on the 26th, I had given up and figured we would have to wait another week until the offices reopened. Then, at 1:15, I got an email from our agency stating that they had received our travel approval! We made it, just under the wire! Now, we just have to wait for the US Consulate in Guangzhou to open on Monday and schedule a Consulate Appointment for us, as the rest of our trip is scheduled off of that. Based on the choices our agency gave us, that means that we should be heading to China as soon as 11 days from now!! I have GOT to start packing! Meanwhile, I will leave you with a few of my favorite pictures of our beautiful girl:
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
We'd like to introduce....
Here is our sweet girl, Lydia Hope! She is 2 1/2 years old. I didn't know it was possible to fall in love with someone when all you have is a few blurry photos of them, but it is. We are head-over-heels for this little cutie.
She has a diagnosis that is very similar to one of Noah's, so we are very familiar with the care involved and have awesome doctors and therapists already in place to help her once she gets home. Her Chinese name is Xu Ru Nan, but she has been living with a foster family since she was discharged from the hospital after her surgery, and they call her Hope. Here are a few more of the photos we received:
Why Adopt? And Why China?
As we begin our adoption journey and start to tell people what we're up to, we get asked lots of questions. We ask ourselves lots of questions. Such an important, life-changing decision should not be undertaken without some pretty serious prayer and consideration behind it. So, for anyone curious, here are our answers to some of those questions:
Why Adopt?
This is a topic we have touched on between the two of us off and on for many years. After C's birth, we learned it wasn't safe for me to get pregnant again, and we talked about our options. Adoption was one of them, but I was quite content with just the two boys and had no desire to add to our family. Hubs felt differently, and longed for another child. He would mention it every now and then, but, knowing my feelings on the topic, he never pushed the issue. Fast-forward to last fall, and God started doing some work in my heart. I started imagining our family with three kids, and began to really notice how happy our boys were with more kids around our house, all playing together. Inexplicably, I began to notice stories about orphans and orphan charity work everywhere. The stories began to tug at my heart in a way they never had before. I wanted to get involved...somehow. I started doing research and was particularly drawn to stories of adoption. The very idea scared the daylights out of me, as it would completely ruin my nice little status quo setup (and blow ALL the money I thought we had been saving for a nice camper!), but it gripped my heart and gnawed at it, until I surrendered to the possibility and started investigating the particulars.
Why China?
My hunt for information started with domestic infant adoption, but moved quickly past. I didn't want a newborn. I felt like God had brought us through some pretty choppy waters with N's life, and that experience has given us both a heart for special-needs kids. We knew that, although it might be more challenging, we wanted to pursue special-needs adoption. So I investigated adoption through the state's foster system. There were advantages--cost and easy travel being the most obvious, but the more I learned about the process, the more I knew it wasn't for us. The timeline is terribly unpredictable, with approved families sometimes waiting 2 or more years for placements in our area. Since it is facilitated through the state, this might not work well for a military family who was, at best, guaranteed only another 18 months in Texas.
I then looked into several international programs--India, South Korea, Mexico, and China. The advantage to China for us was the stability and predictability of the special needs program. Families generally moved through the entire process in 12-18 months, and only one trip to China was required. Additionally, at the time we started the process, Rob was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan around the time we thought we might be travelling to pick up our child. China does not require both parents to travel to complete the adoption, so if our process stretched out longer and ran into the time he would be deployed, we wouldn't have to put anything on hold. But the main reason is far less rational--God continually drew my heart back to China and began to soften my perception of this country and its people. We are excitedly looking forward to our trip, and hope to have opportunities to explore and experience the culture and history of such a fascinating nation.
Why Adopt?
This is a topic we have touched on between the two of us off and on for many years. After C's birth, we learned it wasn't safe for me to get pregnant again, and we talked about our options. Adoption was one of them, but I was quite content with just the two boys and had no desire to add to our family. Hubs felt differently, and longed for another child. He would mention it every now and then, but, knowing my feelings on the topic, he never pushed the issue. Fast-forward to last fall, and God started doing some work in my heart. I started imagining our family with three kids, and began to really notice how happy our boys were with more kids around our house, all playing together. Inexplicably, I began to notice stories about orphans and orphan charity work everywhere. The stories began to tug at my heart in a way they never had before. I wanted to get involved...somehow. I started doing research and was particularly drawn to stories of adoption. The very idea scared the daylights out of me, as it would completely ruin my nice little status quo setup (and blow ALL the money I thought we had been saving for a nice camper!), but it gripped my heart and gnawed at it, until I surrendered to the possibility and started investigating the particulars.
Why China?
My hunt for information started with domestic infant adoption, but moved quickly past. I didn't want a newborn. I felt like God had brought us through some pretty choppy waters with N's life, and that experience has given us both a heart for special-needs kids. We knew that, although it might be more challenging, we wanted to pursue special-needs adoption. So I investigated adoption through the state's foster system. There were advantages--cost and easy travel being the most obvious, but the more I learned about the process, the more I knew it wasn't for us. The timeline is terribly unpredictable, with approved families sometimes waiting 2 or more years for placements in our area. Since it is facilitated through the state, this might not work well for a military family who was, at best, guaranteed only another 18 months in Texas.
I then looked into several international programs--India, South Korea, Mexico, and China. The advantage to China for us was the stability and predictability of the special needs program. Families generally moved through the entire process in 12-18 months, and only one trip to China was required. Additionally, at the time we started the process, Rob was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan around the time we thought we might be travelling to pick up our child. China does not require both parents to travel to complete the adoption, so if our process stretched out longer and ran into the time he would be deployed, we wouldn't have to put anything on hold. But the main reason is far less rational--God continually drew my heart back to China and began to soften my perception of this country and its people. We are excitedly looking forward to our trip, and hope to have opportunities to explore and experience the culture and history of such a fascinating nation.
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