our precious China baby

I've wondered for a long time what it would be like to write this post but for today I'll keep it short and sweet and then I'll hit you with more information in the coming days...

If your heart is beating faster, it should be...

WE GOT OUR REFERRAL!

We know who our China baby is!

She is a seriously precious 18 month old sweetie in the Guizhou Province of China (southwest China). She has a little cleft lip and we think she's the most adorable little peanut ever!

Without further ado...

We'll name her Mary Carson (a double name) and we're planning to incorporate her Chinese name as her middle name but still working on that. More on her name in a later post too.

She was 10 months, almost 11 months old when these pictures were taken at the end of January of this year. She turned 18 months on the Sunday after we found out about her and we celebrated with a proper Chinese dinner. We've been laughing so hard because we were so excited, we printed out a bunch of pictures and put them all over the house. I mean, there's one in the den, one in the living room, one in the kitchen, one on the dining room table so she's eating with us, one in our bedroom, one in our bathroom, one in her bedroom that she'll share with Caitlin, one in the kids bathroom... you get the idea - but what makes it funny is there are way more pictures of her in the house then there are of Hudson (our almost three year old) right now (insert crying laughing emoji). We can't stop staring at her and marveling at the Lord's faithfulness to us and to her in this process.

Almost 11 months since we started this adoption and yet God has known from the beginning that this was the story that He was writing for us and for her.

"Have you not heard that I determined it long ago? I planned from days of old what shall now come to pass..." - Isaiah 37:26

We've known about her since Monday, September 12th and it's been killing us not publicly spread the word - but we were waiting for the official approval from China (our LOA - letter of acceptance) to arrive and we found out today that we actually got it on Friday. Praise God.

Travel in 10-12 weeks - um, hello, Christmas! More on that later too. 

For now, praise God with us for this precious daughter. And a snapshot of her name... Mary means wished for child. Praise God with us for this wished for child. May He bring us quickly to her!

waiting, waiting, waiting...

Well, I haven't posted in a while because there's really not much to post. No updates. We are still waiting. Everyone asks where we are with the adoption and I am so thankful for the questions because it reminds me that I'm not the only one thinking about China baby - but the answer makes me sad, "still waiting..." And if I'm honest, I have been really struggling in the waiting this past month. I've been feeling so melancholy. I've been feeling this urgency, this wringing of hands, this striving in my soul desiring information, desiring to 'fix' this waiting situation. I've been dying to email our agency worker and say - is there an unofficial list? Where are we on that list? How much longer?? Case in point of my melancholy, Adam came home the other night late from work and the kids were in bed and I was sitting on the couch in the living room listening to this Bethany Dillon song on repeat and sobbing. (I am obsessed with this song right now and pray over our baby girl so much as I hear it. I remember when she was just a heartbeat; just a whispered prayer and a secret hope for so long and now I know that we are so close but she still feel so far away - on the other side of the world. Can't wait until we're humming and dancing through the years together.)

So I struggled with this for a couple weeks and then I read something on a blog that really encouraged me. The gist of it was that God is completely in control and sovereign over all things and a reminder that He works all things together for our good. Adoption involves a lot of hardship. Financial hardship, emotional hardship, the waiting is hard, etc. If God wanted adoption to be easy, it would be. But our adoption as children and heirs into the family of God through Christ shedding his blood for us was not easy. Adoption at it's very beginning in the Biblical narrative has always been hard. But the hard is for our good. That's the point that I wasn't getting. It seems and feels like a senseless hard. Wouldn't it be better, Lord, if China baby was just already with us? Wouldn't it be better if she was already home with us instead of languishing in an orphanage? Wouldn't it be better if this process was faster or cheaper or _________? But God is sovereign. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9). His ways are higher than my ways. His thoughts are higher than my thoughts. He is God and I am not. "This God - his way is perfect; the word of the Lord proves true..." (Psalm 18:30). So the point of it is God's way is perfect and his way is for us to wait right now. This waiting is for our good. The striving and restlessness that I was feeling in my soul this past month were actually a distrust of God and His plans for us. The striving I felt was necessary was me trying to make my own way to get out of this hard instead of leaning into the hard place where God has me. But God has me here waiting for a reason. This God - his way is perfect... and that includes this waiting. It is perfect. It certainly doesn't feel like it but the more I speak truth to myself as I feel the striving rising up, the more I feel a rest in my soul. A sitting down at the feet of Jesus like Mary in Luke 10:42, only this one thing is necessary. I love how that verse says "Mary has chosen the good portion." This choosing to believe, this choosing to listen to what Jesus says in the Scriptures - it is just that, a choice. I was defaulting to being anxious and troubled about many things. I have to chose the good portion. And so we wait, and we hope, and we live life in the present. 

We keep eating our Chinese on the 13th day of every month (at least) to mark the number of months past our log-in date. I'm trying my hand at making Chinese and it's turning out pretty good! Caleigh now says it's her favorite food. Although she also hopes that they have orange chicken and/or honey chicken in China (insert my favorite crying laughing emoji here). Here was the veggies before I added them to our Mongolian beef (the meal from August 13th - 2 months logged in)...

Also we are planning on the big kids coming with us to China! We are so excited about this and so are they. We went to get their passports and though I stressed about this all summer, it was truly one of the easiest things. And then we received them on Saturday (10 days after application day and we didn't expedite or anything - amazing!).

I'll post again soon a little bit more about how the referral process works in China. In the meantime keep praying with us that we know who our China baby is before Christmas (though much before that would be awesome), pray for her that the Lord would sustain her, and keep asking us about her - we love it!