We finally received our long anticipated referral on July 1, 2013. It was exactly one year, to the day, since we were registered with the Indian government as potential parents. They were beautiful sisters, ages 6 and 8, and we called them by their new American middle names, Hope and Joy. We gave our verbal consent within the hour. Like any proud mama to be, I printed multiple copies of their photo and shared them with future grandmas, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors.... just about anyone who would give me opportunity! We were in love. We started making bedroom plans, buying cute outfits, and discussing what life would look like with our new brood. But we never got any further with the actual adoption side of things. The next step was to receive Hope and Joy’s case files (CSR), which were needed in order to give official written consent. We were told that this would take about 2 weeks.
Three months passed without a peep from the orphanage about where the case files were. Aaron and I were praying fervently every day for our daughters and whatever was conspiring against them. Then last week we got the dreaded phone call. The president of our adoption agency, Bob, gracefully broke the news to us.
Sometime in August, the Indian government’s database for all adoptions crashed. It was down for three weeks. When it came back up, Hope and Joy were no longer on it. Bob and his representative in India worked diligently to find the girls and figure out what to do, but the orphanage was unresponsive. In addition, India announced that in an effort to continue to improve the adoption process, they were separating the “older children” from the “special needs” children. For those of you not fluent in the adoption world, “older children” means just about any kid ages 5 and over. Did you know that once a child turns 3, his chance of ever being adopted drops by 80%? “Special needs” in the adoption world is a very broad category. It can be anything that you have going against you that would make you harder to place for adoption -- school age children and sibling groups often fall into this category. It also includes what would be considered very very minor medical conditions in the US -- birthmarks, missing a finger or a toe, low birth weight, cleft palate, hearing loss, correctable heart defects, etc. In an effort to get more of their orphans adopted, India is working to narrow these broad categories. Potential families might be totally willing to adopt a healthy 10 year old, but be scared away by the “special needs” label. I get that and I respect their efforts. I think it will help tremendously. But it caused a major problem for us. We applied to the Indian government under the special needs category. *IF* Hope and Joy were to be returned to the database, they would now be under older children. We would have to cancel our registration as a special needs family and start over in the older children program. Not a big deal here in the US. In fact, Bob said that if he could just go into the computer and do it, it would take about 20 minutes. But the reality of dealing with a foreign government is that this would probably take 3 months to a year. We would be at the back of the line, and that is all dependent upon the very big IF Hope and Joy are put back on the database at all.
We were crushed. Our family had loved and prayed and planned for these girls for months. I know that all we had were pictures and names, but really, I liken the pain to having a miscarriage. There is a child who is going to become part of your family and change your life forever and it is going to be awesome. You are planning for it, shopping for it, and dreaming about that day. No, you have never met this child or held this child in your arms, but yes, you are absolutely in LOVE with this child and eager shower them with that love. There were many tears and hard questions. There is tangible fear about what may have happened to Hope and Joy. I am hoping for the best. Perhaps by some miracle, they were reunited with a relative who was financially stable enough to take custody of them. Maybe they were already matched to another adoptive family-- there could have been a paperwork error and they were accidentally double matched -- and maybe they are already on their way home to mom and dad’s loving arms. But maybe..... I don’t want to think about any of the other possibilities. There are too many scary ones that don’t end well. We asked Bob to continue to keep an eye out for Hope and Joy. If we can find out that they are safe and well, it would really help our family.
Our long conversation with Bob then took an interesting turn. He said that he was just made aware the day before of a little girl who was 2-1/2 and was on the special needs list because she was blind in one eye. Bob was originally thinking of another family, and requested more info from the orphanage. The orphanage responded promptly and said “you need to know that this little girl has a sister and they want to stay together if possible”. That is when Bob knew that this was a potential answer to a devastating phone call he needed to make to our family. He asked us if we were interested in considering these new sisters. We agreed to consider it. Our hearts were broken and we were still reeling from the bad news of this phone call, but we were not ready to give up the idea of adoption. An hour later, we had CSRs and medical files on the new siblings. We waited months for that info on Hope and Joy. If we said yes to the new referral, we would already be several steps ahead of where we were. We told Bob that we would think and pray about it and give him our answer the next day. We wanted to make a responsible decision and that is more challenging when emotions are high. So, we talked with our kids, the grandmas, and the Lord, and the next morning we said yes.
I never blogged about the referral of Hope and Joy because the agency had told me to wait until we had their CSRs and things were more official. But now, I can tell you all about our new daughters because even though it has only been a few days, we already have the CSRs and have signed written consent that we want to adopt them. We will be naming the new girls Abigail and Autumn. We did not like the meanings attached to their Indian names and quite possibly they were just assigned these names when they were brought to the orphanage based on their case files. So, they needed new names to go with their new, fresh start in life.
Abigail Faith is 5 years old and is considered physically healthy (she does have the typical orphan issues of malnourishment, anemia, intestinal parasites, etc., but this is to be expected). We cannot share photos of the girls on the internet until we have gone through court in India and have been granted guardianship, but I will tell you that she is adorable. Her deep dark eyes are amazing and she looks very sad in her photo. It makes this mama want to scoop her up and make it all better. She attends kindergarden in India. We will call her “Abby”. Her name means “the joy of her Father” - guess who picked that one - LOL!
Autumn Rose is 2-1/2 years old. She is a tiny little thing. It is hard to tell if she was born blind or if there was some sort of trauma to the left eye. The photo is very small and the medical record has no details at all, but it looks like there are some scars in that area. I hurt for her, what she may have been through, and because I know that most people don’t see past that milky, atrophied left eye. But, oh that right eye, it speaks of mischief and adventure and giggles and LIFE! Besides, we learned that there is a simple prosthesis (almost like a thick contact lens) that will make this left eye a non-issue when she comes home. When we had Winter, we alway thought that if we had another girl we would name her Autumn. I think it is to be expected that our new little Autumn may struggle with self image. However, we will tell her that we named her Autumn because she is beautiful. In the Autumn, the whole world puts on a display of its beauty.
So that is where we are at. Big changes this month, but moving forward again. Please pray that Hope and Joy are safe. Pray for our family as we continue to grieve and heal from the loss of Hope and Joy’s referral. It is a strange and intangible pain that is difficult to put into words. And celebrate with us as we look to welcome Abby and Autumn into our family hopefully in the next 6-8 months or so!
