We talked a lot about if we wanted to do this or not. During the past year, we even looked at the files of three other children, with one of them being a 10 month old baby. When you are given a file to review, the anticipation is high and you so want to be able to say "yes" but sadly that just can't always be the case. When we saw Anna's picture and read her file, we knew 100% she was our daughter. No doubt. We did not have this same feeling with these other children. So, because of this and other concerns with their medical conditions, we did not pursue adopting any of these little ones and had to say the hard words of "Sorry, we have decided to pass." After reviewing the baby's file, we decided we would just take a break from adoption and just not focus on it anymore. If the deadline passed, it passed and if we wanted to adopt again, we would start over.
Fast forward to the day when our oldest darling flew upstairs, showing us Arrayah's picture she saw on Show Hope's website(showhope.org)and enthusiastically saying "We need to go get her! We need to go get her!" Bethany was so excited, I felt compelled to send an email asking about Arrayah, but didn't expect much to happen. Our adoption agency asked to see her picture and said they would look for her, but without her Chinese name, it was "like finding a needle in a haystack." I will tell you I was confused by this, as we knew Arrayah was at Maria's House of Hope where Anna had lived, but China has tightened the information that can be shared and it wasn't as simple as just calling and getting her name. So, with that, I told Beth, it was unlikely they would find her. Well, we may have trouble finding a needle in a haystack, but God has no problem, in fact, he knows right where all of his "needles" are and 2 days later, our agency found her!!!! However, her file had not yet been released, which would make her available for adoption. Well....that was until the very next day, Friday, June 29th, when our agency found out Arrayah's file was being released and better yet, being released to them the next week!!!! What we did not know however was if she would be categorized "Special Focus" which would allow us to adopt her and the only ones to make this determination was the powers that be in China. So there was a 50/50 chance. We prepared ourselves for it not happening and was accepting of that. So, Thursday, July 5th, at 9:00 in the morning, the phone rang and it was our adoption agency....Arrayah's file was marked "Special Focus" and her information was being emailed to us to review!!!! We were also reminded that while the deadline for us was July 11th, China is 13 hours ahead of us, so we really needed to have a decision by Monday so the paperwork could be completed by Tuesday, July 10th.
While we had already spent a great deal of time talking & doing research, we still had to make a final decision. You may imagine one magical moment, but the truth is, I was just getting over some viral thing, Anna had a 104.7 temp and we were trying to get into the doctor and then a few days later Blayten had hand, foot, and mouth disease...ah can you feel the magic?! Actually I think it was a perfect time to make a decision about adding another child. This was complete chaos, could we manage another child during situations like this....crazy, but yes! While our discussions continued and we contemplated all the "negatives" we kept going back to everything falling into place. It was meant to be and while we can't guarantee there will be no challenges, we know that He made it happen and we need to trust that this is the plan for us, for our family and for our Arrayah! Decision made! Arrayah here we come!
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