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I Was Content… (Here’s our secret!)
I was content with our decision to adopt only one child this trip. Cassie and I even joked about how we would have had pretty much every possible combination on our trips to China and would be able to compare them all. We didn’t want to do anything to slow down the process with Jessica because she needs to get home and have her kidneys evaluated as quickly as possible. We were at peace. We were content. I prayed that if God had different plans that He would make them abundantly clear to my husband because I was not going to look and I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up. But just in case, because I know His plan isn’t always the one I am making, I had our home study state two. Our agency and our social worker were both on board with this plan and we were proceeding with a reuse of our dossier.
Reusing your dossier doesn’t save you a ton of time but it does allow you to only update three of your documents for your dossier. Your 1-800a, your home study, and your Adoption Petition. Home studies take weeks no matter what you do because you have to get a new physical with your physician for all family members (and in our family that is a couple of people), update your local criminal background checks, do your fingerprints for the FBI to do your background check, and get your child abuse clearance. There are ways to speed the process up by using agencies such as FBI Alert to do your background check. You can walk into your local DCI office and get your local background check quickly but child abuse clearances always take time.
But then the most amazing thing happened.
Here is the back story that I have shared with a few of our friends.
About 4 months ago, Ben said he had a dream about his brother in China who is 5. He asked when I was going to go get him. I laughed. I showed him a bunch of pictures on the advocacy site and he said no about 20 times to a whole bunch of little boy’s pictures between the ages of 4 and 7. Ben’s mentioned it in passing a couple of times during the past couple of months, but I sort of brushed him off and figured he would forget it. Every once in a while I would show him a picture of a boy about that age who was being advocated for but he has always said “Nope, that’s not my brother.” I let it drop because WE WERE NEVER ADOPTING AGAIN so I never even told Dan about the dream or about showing Ben little boy’s pictures!
Ever since the decision to adopt Jessica, Ben hasn’t said anything about it. I figured he was just happy we were adopting or it was just a weird thing and didn’t give it much more thought. Then Dan saw William’s post by Brooke on a China waiting child advocacy site. Dan rarely looks at kids. We have often talked about me removing myself from these groups because he knows how much it breaks my heart.
Dan has said over and over again that if we could find a way to do it he would adopt a child a year until they told us we couldn’t any more, but we both know there is a point where we have to say no. We both felt that 11 children at home was a good number. Our life was beginning to come together and feel normal again. We sincerely thought we were done adopting.
As I was driving Maisey and Max to the doctor for their pre-op appointment, Dan called and asked me to look at this little boy’s pictures. He says he just saw his face and he can’t explain how he feels. He asks if I will take a minute and look at his videos. I jokingly ask if this little boy is 5 and Dan says yes. He later told me that he thought this was the strangest question. We get out of the car at the rest stop and just for the heck of it I show Ben the picture and he screams, “Yes! that is my brother. How did you find him?”
That is how this whole thing started. We read about this little boy who is with another agency and we feel compelled to ask about him. We reach out to Brooke and she tells us who to get in touch with at the agency. We write an e-mail to Sara and tell her how we feel about this little boy. Sara tells us that there are families looking at his file and his file is on hold. She goes on to say that their agency will have his file until mid December, she will notate we are interested in him, and we should feel free to contact them after that date.
We proceeded with our 1-800a and were waiting for fingerprints. As luck would have it we got our notification for our fingerprint date, the day Dan had left for days on for a conference in Vegas. We would not be able to walk in for our fingerprints because Dan would have to wait anyway.
When he got home he said, “I am confident that this is our son. I want to write another letter to the agency. I have never felt such peace about any child.” Their families that had put William’s file on hold turned his file down and he was now available. The agency was advocating for a family for him and we asked that they would consider transferring the file. Praise be to God, the agreed to transfer. They asked our social worker and our agency to confirm that we would indeed proceed with his adoption and that we were approved to proceed and they worked together to get the CCCWA to approve the transfer.
Judy at our agency told me that had we been locked in with our reuse that we would not have been able to lock in William’s file until we traveled to bring our other child home. Delays that were driving me crazy meant that we could just do our dossier over and not add any time to the process. All of this was possible because while we were waiting for our 1-800a approval and waiting to hear from the other agency, I was busy collecting all the papers for a new dossier….just in case we got William’s file on the 15th.
The day we received our 1-800a notification, I also received my very last paper for our dossier. I took them all to have them sealed right away at the Secretary of State and immediately sent it out to the courier. I can hardly stand it. God is so good. He knows the smallest details and works them out. I stand in amazement every time we adopt.
We now have PA (preapproval from China) for a second child. I’m assuming you would like to see his sweet little face too.
Doesn’t his smile just melt your heart? He is described as “sweet and helpful”. His files says he likes to help the younger kids and plays well with others.
Oh and did I happen to mention that awhile ago Dan had mentioned that he always regretted not naming a child after his grandpa, Bill, who had a huge influence on Dan as he was growing up. You guessed it. The little boy who was advocated for as “William” on the advocacy site will now be named William Alexander.
We are blessed!
