We had met a little girl while we were in China at Fishers foster home and fell in love with her. They called her "Selah". After we came home we couldn't get her off our minds...after a few months, we felt the Lord was calling us to adopt again. We put in our application with the same agency that helped us get Fisher. "Selah" was evidently pretty popular as there were several other families interested and waiting to see her file That happens a lot. It happened with Fisher too.
People follow foster homes on Facebook or Instagram, see a precious child, feel the tug of their heartstrings and fall in love with a face on the screen. But when the paper chase starts, fingerprints begin, medical files are seen and the nitty gritty of oh my goodness this is real sets in, some of those people fade away. They did with Fisher. He had many families interested in him. In fact, when we inquired about him, another family had his file on hold. You can put your name on a waiting list for a child, if they have many interested, so that is what we did, never thinking we would hear back. I mean, why wouldn't someone choose him?
We started to pray and look at other waiting children's files. We even put one on hold and talked to doctors about his condition. He had epilepsy. We just couldn't get peace about pursing him. For some reason epilepsy scared us...but severe CHD (congenital heart disease) didn't. How does that make sense? I can only say it must be the Lords guidance. After many, many weeks of looking at files, they called to tell us we were next in line to look at Fishers file. So, all the others had passed him up? :(. It's sad to think of a child, an orphan, not being chosen. I guess they couldn't get peace about CHD, like we couldn't get peace about epilepsy. You can read about all of the craziness that happened after that on this blog. (We lost Fishers file due to a glitch in the system). It was awful.
Anyway, back to Selah. While we were waiting our turn to see her file, a Facebook friend who advocates for orphans in China, messaged me about a little girl with a heart condition. She had heard through a friend that we were starting the adoption process again. She asked if we would consider this little girl who was very dear to her. I told her of our interest in Selah, and we just felt that was where the Lord was leading. But I promised her that if it didn't work out with Selah, we would consider her. (Her name was "Ruby") We never did get to see "Selah's" file. I'm happy to say, she was quickly chosen, and adopted. But, we were confused. We thought for sure that the Lord was calling us to adopt Selah. But was He? What about Ruby?
I contacted our advocate friend and told her what happened. But Ruby's file wasn't even ready. She couldn't be adopted yet. But we knew where she was, and asked our agency to see if we could get the file when it became ready. No. We couldn't. She was in a foster home that had a partnership with an adoption agency in Colorado! They would get the file. As the Lords providence would have it, we had not made our first agency payment yet, because we had piles of bills from Fishers heart surgery that had to be paid. But now we were really confused. It all seemed like a dead end. I did contact the agency in Colorado, just to see if by chance they had her file or could give me information. They put me on their "list" and said they would contact me if they received her file....but explained that they had many families that were waiting on a little girl her age with CHD, so the chances of us being able to pursue her were slim to none. It was Selah all over again. I thanked her, and we just began to pray for Ruby.
About once a month I would email the lady at the Colorado agency and ask her if they had received Ruby's file yet. The answer was always the same, "no, and when we get it, there is a very long line of interested families, we most likely won't get to you". Ok thank you.
Then we found out we were expecting again. The thrill of that kind of made our thoughts of Ruby fade just a bit and we wondered if maybe she had been adopted and we just decided that the Lord had simply wanted us to pray for her, kind of like Selah. Months went by, and out of the blue we got a voicemail from the agency in Colorado. They wanted to know if we were still interested in Ruby. What?!?! It can't be. We thought surely she had already been matched with a family...in fact, just like Fisher, many families had passed her file over. And again, we totally understood, but it was still so sad and so shocking!
So now, we are faced with a big decision. What do we do? We got her file, and began to pray. We let Fishers cardiologist look at her file. We called to see if our agency could handle our home study, even though the agency was in Colorado. They had said in the past that they would not accept an application while you are preganant. It was all so iffy...and then I spoke with a friend of mine who has a son with a very similar heart condition to Rubys. There are no guarantees for sure. And not a lot can be done. The cardiologist called and said the same thing. We don't know how long her broken little heart will last. But we can love her for the time we have her...and tell her about Jesus!
Now if this doesn't sound crazy to you, well it does to me! I'm 6 months pregnant and talking about adopting a 16 month old little girl from China who has a very broken heart that may not last her very long. But what if we don't take her? How many times will she be passed up? How long will she wait? Are there any families after us that would take her? It looked like a long shot. So what did we decide????
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