God's Perfect Time

From November 10, 2008

For twelve years Wesley had been an only child. He had been as interested in adopting "somebody" as we were. Of course we had promised him a brother who was in his age range. Since we already had a boy though we thought that a girl might be nice as well. This was met by considerable protest from Wesley so we finally decided that if the exact right circumstances were presented we might consider a sibling group of a boy and a girl. Then came the great double cross. Rather than adopting a brother for Wesley, we ended up adopting three little girls who were 3, 5, and 7 at the time. It had been a very difficult adoption and was not finalized until May of 1997.
By the fall of 1997, I began to hear a little nagging voice from within. As I reflected upon it I had the distinct feeling that God was calling us to adopt again. Considering the difficulties that we had encountered, it was with some trepidation that I approached Howard on the subject of adopting again. He asked if we could table the subject until after the first of the year. I agreed to this and waited until New Year’s Day to bring him a cup of coffee in bed and say, "Let’s talk." Never one to fight a loosing battle, he agreed to another adoption.
Having successfully navigated the foster care system once and remembering our promise to Wesley of a brother we began the process and search for a boy in the eleven year old range. As happens constantly the process had changed and we now learned that we needed to take MAPP (Model Approach to Parenting Partnerships) classes. These were lengthy classes which we could not begin until late February and would continue to May. We of course complied with the requirements though and finished the classes.
By late May though there was an uncomfortable undercurrent brewing in this adoption. Howard and I both independently of each other came to the conclusion that we were not supposed to adopt an eleven year old boy from the foster care system. In fact we both felt that we were to adopt a baby girl from China. WOW - how different is that from where we began? But we both felt fairly strongly about this.
It was a long summer as I began to "interview" international agencies by phone. Oddly enough, as sure of our decision to adopt again and from China no less, was how unsure we were of agencies. Early on, I had ruled out several agencies as being too small or limited in their programs. But the big agencies were so rigid. They were not a good fit either. We grew more and more frustrated when we actually thought that we’d found our agency three different times only to have it fall apart at the last minute. We began to question whether or not we were really hearing what we thought we were from God.
By now it was early fall of 1998. This just wasn’t going the way we thought it would. Then one afternoon the phone rang. It was one of the agencies that I had ruled out early on. They were just checking to see where we were in the process. I explained to Danielle that we weren’t and expressed my frustration at all that had gone wrong. She listened sympathetically and then we talked for at least an hour. When I hung up the phone, I knew that we had found the right agency.
Our paperwork was finally completed and our dossier submitted to China in January of 1999. Then we waited for our referral. What seemed to us at the time to be a long wait is now the blink of an eye. We received our referral on August 11th of 1999. I will never forget "the call". She was a beautiful baby of 9 ½ months. Her name was An Yuan.
When you adopt from China, one of the first terms with which you become familiar is the famous Red Thread. The Red Thread states that "Those who are destined to be together are connected by invisible red threads which connect that our souls to all those people - present and in the future - who will play a part in our lives. As each birthday passes, those threads shorten and tighten, bringing closer those people who are fated to be together. And although the thread may stretch or twist it will never break.
There was no doubt that An Yuan was our Red Thread baby. One of the pictures we were given of her was taken in August. Just above her crib was a hanging a Santa - in August, in China where Christmas is not celebrated. Her new mom (me) collects Santas! Her finding place was a steel materials market. Her new daddy buys steel for a living!
But the strongest Red Thread came as we were preparing to leave for China. I was gathering copies of our paperwork to apply for our travel visa. As I reviewed the documents I found myself in tears at what I saw. After all of the delays we had from the fall of 1997 until now in September of 1999, I realized that God had the perfect plan all along. It had been so difficult to find an agency, but finally we found the perfect one. Our agency contract had been signed on November 10th, 1998. Our baby had been born in God’s time - November 10th 1998. Had the adoption happened in our time instead of God’s time, we would not have gotten our little An Yuan. And we would not be celebrating her 10th birthday today. Happy Birthday Maddie!