If we are Facebook Friends and you are a member of my Faith Over Fear page, you probably already know this story. But I know a lot of new friends are now following my blog, so I wanted to recap how we got here.
We decided to add one more little girl to our family pretty much as soon as we brought Cheyenne home. We were originally matched with a beautiful little girl that I found on a China advocacy page. She was 4.5 years old. However, the day after we made the announcement to our families, we got some devastating news...that little girl's medical update came back with new information indicating her needs would grow to be much more than Kevin and I feel adequately able to handle - especially with three other kids to think of. So after learning this information, we made the extremely difficult decision to withdrawal our request to adopt her. Since we are not proceeding with her, I am unable to share any additional information about her. But we do continue to pray that she finds a family.
We were already emotionally attached to that little girl and it took some time for our hearts to feel ready to attach to someone else. However, in reviewing another agency's advocacy page, I saw the beautiful face of our next daughter! This little girl was just about to turn 6 in mid-January. In early January, I inquired about her with the agency that had her file. Initially they blew me off because we hadn't been home a year since Cheyenne's placement. See, China recently changed their rules and require a year from placement before you can even request "pre-approval" on another child. However, the agency that had the first little girl was able to get pre-approval for us, so I knew it could be done. But the new agency was unwilling to try based on how they were interpreting the new rules...
So we went away for a while and looked at a few other files but our hearts and mind kept going back to the little girl at the other agency.
Those of you who know me well know that I can be very persistent when I want something or I feel passionate about something. To me, it wasn't right that they weren't even willing to try to get something that I knew could be done. So my mama bear kicked in and I sent an email to them and begged them to at least try. The worst that could happen is China would say no. I told them if it was a fee they were concerned about, we would pay it but we couldn't just sit by without asking. They made us jump through a few hoops (and a few fees), but ultimately agreed to try!
I am very happy to announce that they submitted our request for pre-approval on Thursday 2/8 and we received the pre-approval from China on 2/9! 24 hour approval is rare, especially when we were expecting push back due to our lack of one year home. But it happened! And this shows us that God was truly leading our hearts to THIS little girl and it is meant to be in all the same ways Cheyenne was meant for us. God blessed the broken road....
We had originally planned to name our next daughter "Noel". We had that name in mind for months at the beginning of this process. But then this summer several things occurred which made us even question whether or not it would be the right decision to continue to grow our family at this time. Kevin was struggling with some medical concerns (thankfully he's better now) and we found out that Cheyenne will likely need to have brain surgery in an attempt to cure her Epilepsy (See separate posts for more on that one).
Our time and energy was running very thin (as was my emotional stability). But we had fought for this little girl and she already felt like ours. I kept thinking if I was really pregnant, we certainly wouldn't abort because of all of this. But that's one benefit to adoption, you can always say no right up until you are in country and signing the legal paperwork. Our home was prepared but we had to make sure our hearts were prepared.
We talked about it and prayed about it for a few weeks. Then one Saturday morning, I heard a message loud and clear that said "Fear is what is keeping you from her. Fear is not Holy. You need to have faith over fear. You need to have Faith that God has a plan." In that moment I knew that we had to change her name to Faith. Faith would be a constant reminder to trust in the Lord, even when in doubt. Then later that day I saw this picture while scanning my Facebook feed:
For us, that was the confirmation we needed to proceed. From that day on we started referring to her as Faith and haven't once doubted the decision since then. We know that God has big plans for us and for that little girl and we can't wait to discover what happens next!
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