The last few weeks have been an emotional roller coaster for me. At the beginning of the month we were blessed by Love Without Boundaries. They are am amazing group who, in their words, " are a worldwide group of volunteers dedicated to improving the lives of orphaned and impoverished children in China."
One of the primary goals of LWB is to provide medical care for children waiting in orphanages. They were able to get into Lily's orphanage and get an updated oxygen level for us. As anticipated, her oxygen levels are in the low 80's, and they reported she gets blue with exertion. Unfortunately the Shanghai orphanage is not one they usually work with, so that was all the information we received. Although this was not unexpected, it's still hard, as a mother, to know your daughter is getting cyanotic with daily activities and you are half way around the world.
The week after that we were able to send Lily a care package via Ann at Red Threads. She is a wonderful Chinese national who prepares personalized care packages and mails them to children in the orphanages. We sent photos of each of us and Ann labeled the photos with our names and put them in a toddler's photo album. We also sent a soft, pink cuddly blanket. Ann wasn't able to get any updated photos of Lily for us, but we are praying that seeing our faces in the photos will begin to prepare our three year old for the transition into our family.
The downhill slide on the roller coaster came two weeks ago when the Dept. of Homeland Security sent us a dreaded "Request for Evidence." In four international adoptions we have never received one of those forms.
We filed our I-800A - Application for Determination of Suitability to Adopt a Child form back on December 29. The government offices are running VERY slowly right now and what took several weeks for Isabelle's adoption stretched out to 60 days this time. So on February 24th we were notified that Torie and my mother needed to be fingerprinted and have background checks run on them....for every state they've lived in since they were 18.
It was disappointing on many counts.... 1) My mother has never been required to do any of this in our previous 3 adoptions and is she really a threat to Lily Rose?? 2) Torie no longer lives in our home - but in an apartment on our land - so by the Hague Convention she typically wouldn't need to be fingerprinted. 3) And finally my mom has lived in EIGHT states since she was 18....that means 8 background checks which can take up to 30 days each.
All of this is very discouraging since it will postpone our adoption by at least one to two months.
Our Senator's office, Senator Patrick McHenry's office was wonderful and petitioned our caseworker's supervisor. However, that, along with a letter from our pediatric cardiologist stating the tenuous nature of Lily's health was not enough to dissuade the office to back down on their new requirements for our family.
I'm sure you can tell by the tenor of this post that I'm still not completely resolved to this new requirement. However the Lord reminded in me in our small group Bible stud,y where we are watching a John Piper DVD series, that He allows suffering and trials to come into our life to refine us like gold. He wants to get out all the impurities...the straw....and make us like pure gold so He can use us.
I can tell you, there's a LOT of straw in this girl right now. Pray for me that I will be pliable in the Lord's hands and that I will have a heart of grace for all involved. And most importantly...pray for our sweet Lily and her health as she waits in China.
