Introducing Our Sweet Baby Carter!!

I felt like he was looking right at me. Every time I logged onto our agency's waiting child page, I would see this face, not quite smiling, waiting for me to see him. Not to see him with my eyes, but with my heart.

He was hidden behind labels that at first seemed frightening, but when we looked further we realized weren't entirely true. Hidden behind labels like "deafness" and "heart defect", to name a few, we found our beautiful son. He is 15 months old and living in a city called Zhengzhou, in Henan Province of China. We are not sharing all of his medical issues publicly but his most obvious one is called microtia or malformation of the right ear. On that side, he cannot hear at all and it is very unlikely that he will ever be able to hear from that ear. On the left side he is not deaf, but does have mild hearing loss which means he will most likely need to wear a hearing aid. We've had his hearing tests reviewed by two audiologists and were told that his prospects for hearing and speech development are very good.

These last few weeks have been some of the most exciting and terrifying of my life. We spoke to several specialists, trying to get all of our questions answered. We waited, and waited, and finally received an update from China with pictures and good news about his development. There are so many unknowns and so many possibilities tied into this choice we have made. It was not a choice made lightly. We knew that once we took the first step in faith, there would be no turning back. Very quickly we realized that it had become clear to us both that this is our son and we already love him, even if we don't know him yet. As with most children who are adopted internationally, there will always be more questions than answers about the time before they were ours, but this is what I know for sure, deep in my core-

First, God has already been loving him, with an everlasting love, even before he was born,

before he was an "orphan",

before he was labeled and mislabeled,

before we saw his sweet face,

before we claimed him as our son.

He was already claimed since the beginning of time, by the One who is and always has been "a Father to the fatherless."

Second, he is not the lucky one in this story.

We are.

We are still in awe at that we have found him!

He is the one we have prayed for, hoped for, searched for, and now adore.

So now our real waiting begins. It will probably be about five to six months before we can bring our precious baby Carter home. Five months have never seemed like an eternity until now!