A Test of Faith

I know we've been quiet, way too quiet for an adoption blog.  If you saw our facebook post, you'd see our big news.  We're pregnant!   It has been a rollercoaster of emotions, both positive and negative.  You have all been so supportive of us, and given us so much love and encouragement, I wanted you all to know exactly whats going on.  This post will be long, and probably unnecessary, but just as it a chance for you to catch up on our lives, it's my chance to use this as a little therapy.  So we'll start at the very beginning...

About a month ago life was as usual.  We were anxiously awaiting our i800-A to be processed for adoption, we were working hard and saving money, and nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be happening.  I had just come home from working a 3 day trip.  It was the most exhausting trip of my life.  It was a great trip, a prime piece of scheduling that my seniority should hold, but I was just so tired the whole time.  I found myself drinking a red-bull a day, and getting nausea from breath mints.  I didn't think much of it.  The next morning I was home and got a notification on my phone that my cycle was a week late.  We've been struggling with infertility for so long, this is a pretty normal occurrence.  A week lake, a week early, whatever.  We've been told by doctors we would never be pregnant without some type of fertility assistance.  Just to be safe, I pulled out an old pregnancy test from under the sink.  This sucker was strait from china, at least 2 years old, and more than a little sketchy.  I had taken dozens of them in the past.  For the first time every, there was  faint pink line.  I went strait into panic mode.  Poor Cory was in the shower.  I stared at him and all I could get out was "I need help reading this."  Poor guy had no context, and probably thought I had gone temporarily blind.  He took his sweet time in the shower, and walked out to a wave of emotions.  We both stared at it.  I fell into a crying puddle on the floor.  Why now? Why after we worked so hard for our adoption? So many things ran through my head.  In the end, Cory had to go to work, and we decided not to place too much faith in a an old, cheap, pregnancy test. Cory then leave for work, and I'm stuck in the fetal position on the floor wondering whats happening to my life. Everything I had been planning for the last year, and had come to know as my truth, had just been turned upside down.

I eventually pulled myself off the floor, went to Walgreens and bought a legitimate pregnancy test and a chocolate milk, and headed to my sisters.  I had texted her with a simple "I'm having a life crisis, can I come over?"  Little did she know what was about to walk through that door.  I just couldn't be alone.  I was so scared.  I finally had the courage to take that test again, and sure enough in big bold letters PREGNANT.  Everything I thought I knew about my life and my body changed in an instance.  I had come to terms with never being pregnant.  I was no longer bitter at everyones pregnancy announcements.  I was so excited to become a mom this summer, and knew that adoption was the way it was going to happen. How could we feel so strongly about adoption, just to have this happen?  In the the end, poor Cory got the news through a picture message of a positive pregnancy test.

We knew when we signed on with our adoption agency that we agreed to place our adoption on hold if we were to become pregnant.  We didn't really think much about it when we signed the papers.  At that time, we knew it wasn't going to be us that had to deal with it.  So although being pregnant is exciting, we knew it meant a loss of the other child we were waiting for. We both agreed we would tell our adoption agency once we were 12 weeks along.  That should have put it right around when our immigration clearances would be coming back.  I will always feel guilty at how unexcited I was to find out i was pregnant.  Something I had wanted for so long, something so many other women dream of and never get, and here I was, wishing the timing could be anything but now.  We were able to get into the doctor that day.  I was so nervous. They confirmed it though, and we tried to move forward, to get excited about this new life.

The next day, we decided to get out of the house, go look at baby stuff, get excited.  It was a great day.  We looked at all kind of things, and started daydreaming and thinking about what it would be like to have a newborn in our home.  When we came home, we went to check the mail like normal.  Sitting in our mailbox was a letter for The Department of Homeland Security.  Our fingerprinting for our adoption had been fast tracked, we now had an appointment in only 4 days.  This sent my down a spiral all over again.  We were receiving an appointment for fingerprinting after only a week and half. it should  have taken closer to 4 weeks.  Why did our home study take an extra 4 months, but our immigration was being done in half the time?  It felt like a slap in the face.  It was everything I had wanted.  Everything I hoped and dreamed of for the last year.  I finally had the paper in my hand, and it felt like it meant nothing.  All our hard work towards our adoption, all the sacrifice, all the love we already had for this unknown child.  In the span of two days, my entire world was turned upside down again, and I didn't know how to handle it. I never thought I could feel so much grief for a child I had never met, and knew nothing about.  Eventually I picked myself up, and we went to our immigration appointment.

I was so proud of us.  We drove to the appointment, waited in the lines, and waited for them to call us back while keeping ourselves totally composed.  We knew this wasn't for nothing.  Since we were doing this now, it means that when the time did come to pick up our adoption again at least we would just need fingerprint and immigrations updates, not all new clearances.  We were feeling positive, and finally ready to tackle this. That was, until the immigration officer expressed his excitement for us.  The whole office was excited, they said they didn't get to do these very often.  I managed to hold it together until we got to the car.  It's always the same feelings of why did this adoption feel so right, when something like this was just going to happen?

We managed to move on with life.  I spent most of the time sick, but otherwise things returned to normal.  It wasn't until about a week later we got an email from our adoption agency that our Dossier was officially being mailed to Hungary, and they had already been talking about our family.  It stung a little.  It was one of the emails we had been waiting for.  We tried to think past it.  We wanted to wait until the 12 week mark to tell them, just in case something went wrong.  They still had to mail the paperwork to Hungary, and input it into the system.  We figured we had time, and we just weren't ready to tell them yet.  We stashed it aside and thought "just a few more weeks and we'll tell them."  Little did we know, we would never get to wait.  They'd know sooner than we wanted.

Two days after we were told they had been discussing our family, we received another email.  It was a pre-referral for a child.  Essentially, they were seeing if we would be interested, and if we were, once our documents were in country we would be sent an official referral.  This email was the email we had prayed for for over a year now.  It had a real child in it, a child that could be our child.  The one we've prayed for and dreamed of.  I couldn't even open the email.  I called Cory at work, and all he said was "yeah, I got it too."  We decided to open it, and it was full of pictures of this vibrant little girl.  Her name is Jazmin, and she will be 3 at the end of May.  She was perfect.  We had been told the chances of adopting a girl were slim, but it's what we always wanted, and here she was.  She was real and she needed a family.  She had a heart defect, but was at her age level developmentally.  She loved to music and singing, and she also did gymnastics.  She was everything we had dreamed of.

At that point we knew we had to tell our agency, but what about this little girl?  Could we do both? Would they let us do both?  It was such a big decision. We decided to take the weekend to figure it out.  I knew I wanted to come to our agency with a "we're pregnant, and we need to place it on hold" or a "we're pregnant, but we'd like to move forward."  I never thought my life would be faced with a such a hard decision.  How do you decided what is best for your family?  We knew we had a baby coming in December, but could our family also be set to have a 3 year old coming in August?  We had no idea what to do.  I have never felt more lost in my life.  That night, we went to bed, and I just couldn't sleep.  I just laid there, crying.  I decided to get up and go into the living room, but it just felt too big.  I tried the office, and it was just too bright.  I eventually settled in the room that we had already started setting up to be our child's room.  It has a twin sized bed, bedding, and toys.  I had been strategically avoiding this room for weeks now, it was just too hard to look at.  For some reason that night, it gave me so much comfort.  At that time, all I could think to do was turn to prayer.  I had hit what seemed like rock bottom, and I needed help climbing back up.  We had been using under the bed as storage, and it just so happened that there was an old set of scriptures in there.  You know, those old sets you used during seminary in high school.  It's filled with notes, quotes, and overall super beat up.  I was thumbing through them looking for anything.  Any sort of wisdom that could make this all hurt less.  Anything that could help us make this decision.  I eventually stumbled to Luke 1:37 "For with God nothing shall be impossible."  This verse is what is told to Mary when she is told she will bear the son of god, and that her cousin Elisabeth would also conceive a son, despite her old age.  I've read that scripture a million times.  It's even highlighted and underlined in this set of scriptures, but it had never meant more to me than it did now.  I finally found peace, and was able to sleep.  I slept right there in the bed that was set aside for a child, until around 3am, when I finally made it to my own bed.

The next morning Cory had to work early, leaving just around the time i was getting into bed.   I woke up with a text from him saying that he had decided to check in the kids rooms before he left for work, and saw my scriptures laying open there. He read the scripture as me and reached the same decision.  We needed to attempt to bring this girl into our home. We have been learning that faith in God, means faith in his timing. 

We drafted our email, explained everything.  How we felt, how early we were in our pregnancy, what we thought timelines would be like, and we sent it to them.  We knew at this time, that we had made the right decision and it was no longer in our hands.  We felt good about it, and new that no matter what way this came out, we still ended up a with a child.  We expressed to them that we knew any decision they make would be for the child and our families benefit. We sent it out to them, and we waited.  Finally, on Monday afternoon we heard from our Agency.  They Congratulated us on our pregnancy, and assured us they see this kind of thing happen all the time.  The reminded us of their policy, but said they would take it to their committee and talk to our social worker about it.  Our social worker has been awesome.  I immediately shot her an email, and she was quick to respond.  She expressed her excitement for us, and she fully supported us.  She thought the little girl would be perfect for our family, and said she would advocate for us as best as she could. Now I was starting to get excited! Could this really happen? We talked to our agency again, and they said we should have an answer by Thursday.  We waited, and we waited, and waited.  All of a sudden Friday is here, and still no answer.  We email them, and they let us know that they've all met and discussed, but they've decided to take it to the Childrens Ministry of Hungary, and get their take on it.

Each country you adopt from has a different set of laws and regulation that pertain to the adoption of children.  Hungary has a very strict rule, that the child must be the youngest child at time of adoption.  They are very strict on birth order, as studies show that children thrive best when their current birth order is respected.  We didn't think much of it.  We'd bring her home in August, and have a baby in December.  Sure, it's not a ton of time, but we felt confident that it wouldn't be a problem.  We knew it would be hard, but we knew even more that it would be worth it.  However, once we heard that they had got the country involved, we felt an overwhelming sense of dread.  Things were starting to feel impossible.  We knew it wasn't in our hands, and what was going to happen, is what was supposed to happen.  We knew we had made the decision we felt we needed to, and God had a bigger plan for us.  We knew the correct plan for our family would be delivered to us.

I am so grateful that we had plans to visit my best friend that weekend.  We had planned it even before we knew we were pregnant.  We thought it would be our last trip to see Marissa and Cody before our adoption went through, so we were even staying a day longer than usual.  I left for the trip feeling like if they said no to our adoption it would destroy me, and I came home feeling very understating that what was going to happen would happen, and there were positives for both.  Spending the weekend with the two of them and their 6 month old, Oliver, was amazing.  We spent a lot of time just being together.  Getting to spend it with their perfect baby, made me more excited to get to do things with our future baby.  Marissa and I took Oliver swimming for his first time.  It was the most adorable thing in the world.  Getting to be there for one of his first meant so much to me, and it reminded me that we soon would get to do all these first.  It wasn't how we had imagined our family would start, but we were still starting a family.  I can't explain why, but after our weekend with them I felt ready for their answer.  No matter what the outcome was.

Fast forward to the next Wednesday, and we finally had our answer.  Because of the laws on birth order in Hungary, they would not allow us to bring Jazmin home.  We expected it to come, but it was still like a punch to the gut.  We knew that at this time, there was nothing else we could do.  Our adoption journey was officially on a hold. I sobbed as we signed the official paperwork. We know in our hearts that adoption is still the correct path for our family, our timing just must have been a little off.  We have not given up on our adoption. We have some great people in our corner fighting for us.  Our social worker here in Arizona has made sure we're eligible to adopt any child in the U.S., and are eligible for the foster system.  Our adoption agency has agreed to hold our funds for 2 years.  We may not be able to get back into the Hungary program because of their birth order laws, but we know there are so many other countries out there.  We are already considering Bulgaria and India. Our currently plan is to re-address our adoption in exactly one year from today.

This has been the hardest thing we have ever done.  In the span of a month we have been overjoyed, terrified, grief stricken, and excited.  We've had to make decisions, and receive answers we never thought we would have to. This entire thing has been an incredible test of our faith.  Our entire life plan has made a 360 degree turn, and we're still trying to adjust from that. I've asked had to ask "why now?" about a million times during this process.  We are so excited to be having a baby, but are still mourning the loss of our other child that we felt was ours too.  I've never had a miscarriage, but I can imagine it feels a lot like this.  Losing someone you hadn't known yet, but already had such big hopes and dreams for, and so much love for.  We know our adoption journey isn't over with this, it's just taking a little detour.  When i was telling a family member about everything, they said something that really stuck with me.  She said "If you already would have had a baby, would you ever had pursued adoption?"  I had to really think about it, and honestly said "probably not."  She replied, "Then maybe this is gods way of making sure you bring home your child that's out there, your timing is just a little off."  I don't know why, but I haven't been able to shake that.  I know we will adopt.  We probably never would have considered it if  we already had a biological child.  Now that our hearts have been given to adoption, we can never get them back.  We don't know what are next step will be.  It may  be picking up our international adoption, it may be a domestic adoption, or it may be the foster system.  We just know that our foundation is in place to bring home ALL our children, it just might take a little longer than we expected.