Our soon-to-be new son!

Well, this has been one of the best and one of the hardest and most emotional weeks I’ve had in a long, long time – talk about a roller-coaster.

We have been working on an adoption for quite some time now, but didn’t want to make it public until we were reasonably sure it would go through. Many of you know that we do a lot of work with orphans around the world, and our goal was to adopt a child who would have a hard time finding a family. We had been pursuing a little boy from China whom we felt strongly we were supposed to have. He is eight and has a pretty complicated heart condition. He was abandoned at 40 days old by his parents, likely because of his condition. It looked like we weren’t going to get him, but then we found out that we had, and a few days ago we got our official match from the government of China. We were over the moon!

We were told that his heart had been fixed but he would not be able to be as active as other children. Then we were told, yes, he’d had a heart surgery, but he would certainly need another, and his future was less certain. We have prayed continually about this boy, and our whole family feels that he is absolutely supposed to be part of our family. We accepted the placement with great joy last Wednesday, and then on Thursday night we met with a cardiologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital here to go over a new echocardiogram they had sent us. We had received it in Chinese, so it had taken a while to find someone who could translate it and get it over to the hospital.

The information we got was pretty devastating actually. We posted this on facebook:

How to express going from elated to heartbroken to peaceful in such a short time? We are so excited to welcome our new little guy into the family, but the consult with the cardiologist did not go the way we’d hoped. The short version is that he has had one surgery and needed another, but he needed it about six years ago, and now there is a good chance that it is just too late – the damage may be too great to risk it. We all feel very strongly that the Lord wants us to have this boy in our family, whether his life is short or long, and so we are proceeding, and asking that you please pray with us for his protection, for speed in the process so we don’t lose more time, and for a miracle for his heart. I feel such an overwhelming peace that this is the path, and that God will take us through it, and I know he loves this little guy more than anyone can express. We just want him to be loved by a family and have the best chance he can. Thanks for your prayers.

I can’t tell you what that first night was like. We’ve never met this boy, but God has already given us a love for him, and it felt like one of our children had been given a death sentence. With time to pray it through, we are feeling peaceful about it, and we know God holds him in His hands!

The doctors have told us that they is no way to know if he will be able to have the surgery until we get him here. They give it 30-40%. We are asking people to pray for a miracle for his heart, and that it is not too late, and that he will not be afraid and will know the love we have for him and the love God has for him. We’re also asking for prayer for our children and our family as we transition.

It’s been a really hard week, but these are the times we are privileged to see God show up in a way that we never would have without difficulty. He loves this boy! We are not allowed yet to release his name or the province he is in, but we would love your prayers for him even so – God definitely knows his name!

Thanks from our family. We are feeling blessed. And I will keep blogging the journey here. Soli Deo Gloria.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 24th, 2015 at 9:07 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.