So we stared at his precious face and wondered if this little one was "ours". I set to work researching his special need as thoroughly as I could and quickly became filled with uncertainty. This need was much much bigger, and long term than we had anticipated. However I truly believe if God has a child for us, no matter the need, he will give us all we need to care for them and the blessing will outweigh any difficulty. So we kept praying and I sought the counsel of other adoptive families in our agency's private Facebook group as well as the advise of a staff member at Cincinnati Children's International Adoption Clinic as well as the prayers of folks in our life.
The next morning I still had uncertainty and a lack of peace. We read through his entire file multiple times. Praying over this little one and asking for clarity. I read through the almost 30 comments from more experienced adoptive families and kept praying for direction and peace if this was our child. No peace. Still uncertainty. So I was prepared to suggest to Dan that we just sit on this and keep praying for a day or two when I got another email from our social worker letting us know that another family had placed a hold on this little guy's file. Meaning another family is in the beginning stages of possibly pursuing him for adoption! She told us that if we wanted to put our names in the pool as a possibility if this family couldn't move forward for some reason we could. God gave clarity in that moment. We needed to wait. This little one has a family who is likely more prepared to meet his needs and God has another child for us.
So how does this whole referral thing work?
All of the China program is a "Special Needs" program. However there are two basic lists our agency is working from. There are children who are considered "Special Needs" and those considered "Special Focus." The terminology does not particularly help in explaining what this means.
"Special Focus" kids are children with more moderate to severe special needs or older children. These kids are typically harder to place because of this. Our agency has lists that we can review at all times of Special Focus kids. They are trying to advocate for them and place them in families. Tons of adoptive families find their children from reviewing the profiles of these children. The little boy we reviewed yesterday was from this list of children our agency is advocating for.
The second group is called "Special Needs". These children all have more mild and correctable special needs. Our agency receives these files (groups of them weekly I believe) and they are in our agency's hands for 3 weeks then they go back into Chinese system. So in that time our agency works to match these children with families who are waiting to be matched. You cannot be matched with these children until after you are "Logged In". (which we were a few weeks ago) Unlike the Special Focus children- if we wanted to pursue a child posted there we could have all the way through our adoption process.
Our social worker has document in our file with around 100 special needs listed. We had to check "yes", "no", and "may consider" for each. We researched on our own every condition and we had consultation with our adoption physician at Cincinnati Children's and she went through the list helping us feel sure about each thing we checked. This is what our social worker is looking at when trying to match families with children.
What are we waiting for now?
Yesterday I talked with our social worker about the next steps. Next week the governmental offices in China who handle orphan children will be closed due to Chinese New Year. So we do not expect any new Special Needs files next week. But it should resume the following. Our social worker will call me when she thinks she has a file that matches us. She will give me brief run-down on the phone and ask if we would like to review the file. Now at this point the clock starts. For an official referral from the Special Needs list there are time limits. We have 24 hours to review the file. In this time if we are serious about this child we will email the file to our adoption Physician and she will review the file for us and get back to us her best assessment of the file. She will tell us any red flags she sees medically. She is so experienced in this area that she knows trends in diagnosis and mis-diagnosis in China and how certain medical conditions are likely connected to others ect. This all must be done in the 24 hours. If we want to move forward from the end of that 24 hours we have 48 hours to submit an official LOI (Letter of Intent) to the Chinese government. This is us saying "We intend to pursue this specific child for adoption."
I told our social worker that if she sees any kids from the Special Focus list that she thinks might be a good fit for us to pass them along too.
So we are still waiting. However we feel that we are really really close. Our social worker said she was looking yesterday at the current waits for referrals and really 2 months is on the longer end. We have been logged in 2 and half weeks now. We know nothing will happen next week. So the following week we will be close to a month.
Through this emotional 24 hours I feel better prepared to receive another file. The advice I got from other adoptive families was so good and so insightful I feel I have a much better perspective on how to discern in this matching phase. I am thankful for the prayers of the people in our life. I feel more confident that God will give us what we need to know with certainty and peace when we are to say "yes" and walk forward.
So, we'd love your continued prayers. We are close. Anticipation is at an all time high in our house.
Thanks for supporting us and walking through this with us!
