The Beginning

Many people have asked for us to start a blog so they can follow our trip in China.  So, I thought that would be a great way to share this wonderful journey with our family and friends.  Unfortunately, I am not the eloquent one in the family, so bare with me as I try to share in writing our journey.

Our adoption journey started on February 7, 2004 the day Caleb was born.  That day was a very traumatic day for our family.  It was a complicated delivery which ended up with Caleb on a ventilator in the NICU and me in the ICU post hysterectomy.  Kevin and I had never even thought about adoption before this day.  God had a special plan for our family.  He knew there was a child on the other side of the world that would need a family and He used this tragic day for good. 

After some time, Kevin and I began to seriously think about the possibility of adoption.  For many different reasons, we felt like international adoption was the right choice for us.  I'm not exactly sure of the timing of everything, but somewhere in 2006 our church had a seminar from an adoption agency that worked with both China and Guatemala.  Our church had also started doing some mission work in China around the same time.  Many circumstances began to present themselves to us and made it clear to us that China was the place for us to pursue our adoption.  In January of  2007 we officially started our paperwork and down a new chapter in our life.  When we started our paperwork it was about an 18 month wait to get your child.  Totally doable!  Right?!?  Little did we know then that things were going to change and drastically. 

For those of you that know Kevin and I well, we tend to have a problem with inertia.  Despite both being very successful in our careers, things on the home front often take us a long time to complete.  We made a goal to ourselves that we would diligently work on the mountain of paperwork to get it done in a timely fashion and we did.  Our log in date with China is September 5, 2007 only nine months after starting the process.  Pretty good for us!

Then the wait began.  And we waited and waited and waited.  The wait for being matched with a child continued to grow much to our disappointment and actually continues to this day.  I am not really sure why, but there are many families waiting to adopt children from China.  The most recent matches were with people who have been waiting 5 years.   For this reason, we did not share with a lot of people we were doing this.  Too many questions with little in the way of answers.  The good part for us in the wait was that we had Caleb.  During this time a couple opportunities for domestic adoptions came our way.  With much disappointment that did not work for our family.  God had a bigger plan. I see that now. 

As the wait continued to grow and we could see no changes in sight, Kevin and I began seriously considering adopting a special needs child about one year ago.  For any of you who have completed adoption paperwork regarding a special need, you know that it is a very difficult task to sit down and decide which type of special needs you would consider and which you would not.  For this reason and probably some due to inertia as discussed above, it took us 8 months to finally decide and complete our special needs paperwork.  Then with some really incredible miracles and the amazing work of God in our lives, we were matched just 2 months later with Chloe on April 26, 2011! 

I cannot put into words the incredible emotion our family felt on that day.  This almost 4 year journey was hitting the high point.  I wanted to shout it from a mountain top and matter of fact I told anyone that would listen.  The joy in our hearts is overwhelming. Praise God for this amazing gift.

Now we've been completing phase 2 of the paperwork journey.  It is a lot of hurry up and fill out these forms and then wait X number of weeks to get them approved.  The next step cannot move forward without the previous approval etc.  This part of the wait has been much more difficult for us than the previous 3.5 years. Seriously.  We are very anxious to go and get our daughter.  And now hopefully the wait is coming to a rapid end.

So I guess that brings us to this point.  I hope to continue to share with you as we prepare and travel in China.  We appreciate continued prayers as our family and Chloe prepare for "Gotcha Day."