**Edited: This is the FIRST part of her story. I'm too wordy.
On November 11 and 12, Zeke and I went to Birmingham for Crossings training with Lifeline. That weekend, we were privileged to meet Gabe and Melissa Ross in person. They shared with us that Herbie Newell, the director of Lifeline, would be speaking at Lifepoint on Sunday for Orphan Sunday, and they invited us to join them. We had missed the two previous Sundays at Trinity because of gymnastics meets, so we discussed it but decided not to go.
Sunday morning, I woke up overwhelmed. Why is it that Sundays can be the stinkiest days of the week? After being gone all weekend, Monday was looming almost from the time my eyes opened, and all I could see was my to-do list. We decided to go to small groups at Trinity and then head to the grocery store to start checking things off the list ASAP. When Sunday School was over, I looked at Zeke and in an uncharacteristic moment of spontaneity said, "Let's just get the kids and head to Lifepoint. Want to?" If you know Zeke, you know he thrives on spur of the moment, so off we went.
Herbie Newell didn't just speak. He preached. He had just returned from a trip to China on Friday, but jet lag didn't seem to have kicked in; I was scribbling furiously, trying to keep up. At one point, he told the story of visiting an orphanage in Suixi. He said that the two things that you noticed when you arrived were the stench from babies lying in their own waste, and the silence. With 150 babies crammed into a tiny space, you could still hear a pin drop. The babies had realized that no one was responding to them, so they had quit crying. However, a baby had been dropped off on the orphanage steps just a couple of days earlier, and was crying loudly. His words haunted me: "That baby had not yet learned the secret of Suixi." I sat for a few minutes, and then wrote a note to Zeke on the back of my sermon notes: "So can we ask him for that crying baby at Swayshe?" He just raised an eyebrow and kept listening.
After the service, we spoke to the Newell family (who sat right in front of us), and mentioned that we were a Lifeline China family. Herbie asked where we were in our process, and I said, "We are just waiting to be matched. So...if there's a little crying girl in an orphanage in Suixi, we are available!" (It was a weird day. I was spontaneous and overly outspoken, all within a couple of hours.) He asked us for our age parameters, and asked about our special needs considerations. I started talking about what boxes we had checked (ha!), and he said, "Heart condition?" I looked at Zeke, and we both nodded. He said something along the lines of, "That's all I can say right now," and I honestly can't remember how the rest of the conversation went or how it ended. My brain was in a fog and my stomach was in knots!
We got back to the car and I looked at Zeke and said, "Did we just ask for our baby girl?" He said, "I'm not sure, but it really feels like something happened!" We couldn't shake the feeling that something was going on. We went to lunch, I ate less than half of mine, and Zeke ate both his and mine. It's how we cope. Ha.
That evening, after a day of nerves and an entire to-do list derailed by one conversation, I emailed our social worker to tell her about the conversation. I also may or may not have called on Monday to repeat the story and reiterate to her that, no matter what our paperwork said, we were ok with a heart condition, especially if it belonged to one crying little girl from Suixi. I felt a little crazy, but I did want her to have a heads-up in case she heard anything about it on her end ;). She told me that most of that team that had just returned from China wasn't in yet, but if she found out anything, she would let us know. We were a bit deflated because we had both just felt like something was happening. Nothing had really changed for us in the process, so we just prayed for that little girl in Suixi and kept waiting.
On Wednesday afternoon, my phone rang. My sweet class knew that I was waiting on an adoption call and would answer any 205 area codes that popped up. When I saw the Lifeline number, my heart started pounding. The first words our social worker said were, "Lisa, this is kind of crazy, but I have a file for your family to review. It's the little girl that Herbie was talking about Sunday...that little crying baby from Suixi." Um, yes God? WOW. She emailed the file, but Kinley had a dentist appointment that day and I had already shut down my computer. I couldn't look at much of it from my phone. I skimmed over the medical info, but really the only thing I focused on was this picture:
I was immediately smitten with that smile! Zeke and I talked for a minute, I picked Kinley up and showed it to her, and called my parents. We all agreed that she was precious and that she really looked like a Judy Lin, and I started trying to forward her file to our pediatrician. When I got to the dentist office, I noticed that she had genetic testing done. I saw things about chromosomes and some ??? (the file had been translated from Chinese and apparently it didn't all translate) and my heart stopped. Of course, Dr. Google is not much help when you are a panicked mom holding a baby, much less to a panicked mom who hasn't even physically laid eyes on a baby who is halfway across the world! So, for the rest of the night, we did some research and looked at the many pictures that came with her file.
The next day I spoke to our social worker. "Sophie," as her file was named, was referred to us as a baby with CHD, but at this point we were most unsure about the genetic testing. Our family was given until the Monday after Thanksgiving--an extended time period due to the holiday--to make a decision about moving forward with adoption. I called the International Adoption Clinic at UAB to have her file reviewed, and settled in to wait again. We looked at pictures, repeatedly consulted Dr. Google, called friends and asked for favors from geneticists, and prayed for this sweet girl and our decision.
On Friday, I still had not heard from the IAC or the pediatrician. I called again, and apparently none of the files I had sent to any doctors went through because of their size. I resent everything, and began a 3-day wait for their analysis. All day, I had this picture on my computer, and her little eyes seemed to look straight into me.
By Friday afternoon, I was almost ready to throw caution to the wind and call the adoption agency and just say yes.
My Friday night plans included a hair appointment and CrossFit. I made it to the gym early, and my phone rang in the car as I pulled in to the parking lot. No three-day wait necessary! It was the IAC with information about our file, so I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and scribbled notes down as the doctor talked. The heart condition, Tetralogy of fallot, seemed pretty textbook and a relatively easy fix. One (OPEN-HEART!) surgery, and she should be ok there. The unknown is the genetic testing. She went through some scenarios of what it could mean, and encouraged us to go back to the parameters that we had set for ourselves at the outset of our adoption journey--before we saw any photos or video of this precious girl that might sway our opinion about what we thought our family could handle. It was great advice, but my heart was broken. I couldn't even call Zeke. The information that I had been given was more than I thought we could handle--definitely more than we had planned for. I walked in to the gym, and when friends asked for an update and if I had heard from any of the doctors, I broke down. I was going to call Zeke and discuss it with him, but decided to just wait until after class. I knew he was falling in love with that little face already and I just didn't want to share. When I did call him, we were both upset. We agreed to just keep praying and see what our pediatrician said, but I couldn't keep from feeling that it was over. I sat on the couch and ugly cried that night for almost an hour after our kiddos went to sleep. Just hours earlier, I was ready to say yes to this little girl, and with one 15-minute phone call, I felt like someone had taken her from me. It wasn't a fun night.
Over the course of the next week, we tried to convince ourselves that saying no would be ok, and sweet friends and family reminded us that they would think no less of us and that it would be ok either way. We heard from our pediatrician, who restated the uncertainty of her medical file. We kept praying, but were probably leaning towards saying no. The closer we got to our deadline, the more I began to find my normal comfort zone with decision-making: I like to just curl up into a little ball and wait until the decision-making time has passed, because usually at some point a natural conclusion occurs and I don't have to actively make a decision. Unfortunately for me, this situation wouldn't resolve that way. I was going to have to give someone a yes or a no, like it or not.
Part Two to come soon!
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