It's time for me to "testify"...

Yesterday was a busy day filled with official adoption "stuff". We had to return to the Civil Affairs office to have the adoption finalized. The first 24 hours we had him we were just his temporary guardians. Adopting parents have 24 hours with their child to decide if they are willing to proceed with everything. It sounds strange, but once in a blue moon parents do return their child, often because the child's needs were different or much greater than they expected. I cannot imagine how painful it must be to make that decision. In the adoption community this is called "disruption" and though it is rare, I think it is the one thing every parent fears deep in their heart of hearts. Justin and I had actually had conversations about "what if" scenarios but it was almost too horrible of a topic for us to imagine or discuss. For quite some time I have had a deep, deep belief that every step of our journey has been ordained by God. That may sound like overly spiritual mumbo-jumbo to some and to a lot of people who know me, they know that I don't throw around God-talk lightly. But, for reasons I may someday share, I distinctly and very clearly believed that God was bringing Carter into our family for a reason. He was meant for us and we were meant for him. Most of those reasons we won't ever fully realize, but I know they are there. 

So, on Gotcha Day I was decidedly not nervous and the only way for me to describe it is to say that I felt deep, deep peace. True, unwavering, peace. The kind that "surpasses all understanding."  No butterflies. No jittery stomach. Just calm. When we saw Carter for the first time, I knew.  He was ours. His screaming, angry, bossy self, yelling commands at us in Chinese only settled reassurances deep into my heart. The truth is, when we found is file, he had several delays. At 8 months we wasn't sitting up on his own, and the update we got at 14 months said he was crawling but not yet walking or standing. His weights were so far below the growth curve it was appalling. At 14 months he only weighed 14 pounds and when we got an update 3 months later he was only up to 16 pounds. The developmental specialist at Johns Hopkins who reviewed his file said she thought he had hypotonia and "global developmental delays" but that she also thought he would catch up eventually if he was given time and nurture. When Justin and I decided to pursue him, it was a true leap of faith. And for seven months we had to learn to walk in that faith. His file said he was "deaf" and even though we had hearing tests that showed he could at least hear out his left (good) ear, at the time of the testing he had mild to moderate hearing loss in that ear and profound hearing loss out of his right ear. We imagined all of the worst case scenarios and tried to prepare as best as we could. We did not get many updates while we were waiting for him and were sent no new pictures after October. It was painful for me to see other waiting mamas receive new photos and even new videos while we had nothing but our imaginations, trying to guess what he looked like over the months while we waited. Fear and uncertainty would sometimes send me into a panic. The only thing I could do was pray. "Lord, please help him to be with a foster mother who loves him."  "Help him to stay healthy."  "Give him enough to eat today, God."  "It's cold in Zhengzhou, please help him to be warm."

What I have realized in the last twenty-four hours is that all of our prayers were being met and then some. We didn't receive any photos because his foster home was not close to the orphanage. From the picture that we now have, it is clear that he was being loved and nurtured far beyond what we could have ever hoped for. He now weighs a whopping 23 pounds! My baby with hypotonia and global delays is running around, climbing over everything and is nothing less than a fireball of little boy energy. He clearly hears well, talks to us constantly in Chinese, and as already learned the word "more" which he uses frequently whenever food is involved. He has been taught how to use a fork and spoon and drinks straight out of a glass (which I discovered after he refused all bottles and sippy cups). The boy even know how to work a touch screen and demands that we let him have our phones whenever we take them out. I was prepared for an underweight baby who mostly took formula and very soft foods, but he literally saw a pizza box, reached in, grabbed himself a piece and devoured it. He even fought Charlie over the last piece of pizza in the box 

We have so much work ahead of us. He will still have moments of insecurity and sadness and last night when he realized it was time for bed and we weren't taking him back to his home, he unleashed a wave of total grief and sorrow. The only thing I could do was hold him and cry. But he has already started reaching to me for comfort, has given me some slobbery kisses, and is not happy at all when Charlie climbs into my lap, which is what I would call an attachment miracle. 

I say all of this because this is my testimony and one that I know I am supposed to share. Adoption is not for everyone and is no where near being a solution to what some have called a global "orphan crisis."  But for me, this adoption has been a journey deeper into the heart of God than I ever knew I could go. It has forced me to let go of so much of my own pretenses and false understandings of what it means to be what we post-Evangelicals like to call a "Jesus follower." Never in my life have I been so certain that I was being obedient to my Savior and yet so afraid of what was waiting on the other shore. I have been forced to live by faith, day by day.  I been sent down to my knees because the only thing I could do was pray and then pray some more. I have dug deeper into the Word than I ever went in all those years of seminary and discovered that Scripture really and truly still speaks Truth and Wisdom and opens the eyes of our hearts to tiny glimpses of God's own self. I even left my respectable, downtown traditional church for a church that has all those things I used to roll my eyes at (think spotlights, fog machines, video productions, and loud music) because I realized that you can take the girl out of the Pentecostal church, but you can't take the Pentecost out of the girl and what this girl's soul needed was not more hymns and liturgy but a chance every week to stand in worship with other people, lifting my hands to God, laying everything down. I needed to publicly bare my soul, and let God's grace rush in again and again. All of that only happened because we took a chance and followed the path we believed we were meant to journey down together as a family. What I know now is that following God does not guarantee a life free of fear, nor does it mean you will not have to make terrifying, scary decisions. Following God is not a promise that life will be easy or without sorrow. I tremble when I think just how easily we could have found our boy in a much different state. But what overwhelms me more than anything is the realization that fear almost kept me from this beautiful boy who was worth every agonizing, heartbreaking second of our wait, and then some. And that, I believe, is true, amazing, grace.