Uh-oh! Big News in Wade World!

You’ve all probably heard of unplanned or unexpected pregnancies before, but have you ever heard of an unplanned adoption?

Well, maybe now you have…

The Wade family is taking the plunge again! We are diving into the paper chase to adopt another little girl from China!

So just how does a family end up in the midst of an unplanned adoption?

After returning home with Keziah, probably even before she came home, we felt that this might not be the last addition to the Wade family. I had one more girl name left! All my kids’ names have been selected long before their arrivals.

Our lives and our hearts have been permanently altered, changed by adoption. The beauty of this picture of God’s love for us, His pursuit to bring us home into His family through Christ’s death without the guarantee that we would accept and receive His love, has been lived out in our home. Okay, life at the Wade house may not always be beautiful. In fact, it’s usually pretty messy. But that is also part of the wonder. That somehow through all the muck and mire of daily life, through all the struggles and difficulties, we are a family.

Oh, and one more reason! Thinking ahead to family holiday gatherings, we wanted Keziah and her sister to be able to share together their stories of the crazy parents who brought them home one day. We wanted Keziah to have someone to share her heritage. Our little girls.

So now rewind several months ago. I have continued to maintain contact with our adoption agency. I follow their blog and periodically check in on their waiting child listings to pray for all the kids to find their forever families. On several of these cyber stops, I noticed this little girl to whose picture I was drawn. Eventually I showed her to Christopher.

But we both KNEW that this was not the time to begin another adoption! We PLANNED to wait. China requires at waiting at least one year after a child is added to your family through birth or adoption. Keziah still needed to be settled into the family. She needed to be secure of her place in our family and our love for her. All the other kids still needed to recover from all the “new baby” adjustments and changes. Oh, and then we needed to financially recover from Keziah’s adoption. Years, Christopher was telling me it would need to be years before we would be ready to adopt again. That was our plan.

Still this little girl had captured my heart. She just looked like she had to be a Wade! (You can see the attitude in her pictures.) So on a total whim, I did something crazy. I sent an email to a contact from our agency who had previously been the director over the waiting child program. We’re not even officially a perspective adoptive family! But I asked her for a BIG favor. If ever the time came to return her file to China because this little girl had not been adopted by another family, could they contact us to see if we were at a place where we were ready to pursue her adoption. Lots of IF’s. Of course, I was cautioned not to become too attached. I was reminded that another family could choose to pursue her adoption at any time. I was informed that her file would remain with our agency for many more months. BUT they would call if and when the time came to return her referral file.

Good. Fine. Wonderful. We would continue to pray for all the kids and especially this little one to come home to their families soon.

Yeah, I still checked in with her occasionally. No family ever seemed interested. No one ever requested to review her file.

Fast forward to the BIG snowstorm in the D.C. area, where our agency is located. Everything is snowed in and shut down. Agency staff is working a little from their homes. During this time period, China requests that our agency return ALL waiting child files that are not being pursued for adoption. Immediately every child is now listed as “Referral Returning,” except for those children who are being pursued. A deadline is set that families interested in information about any child must contact the agency by February 18th.

So do you think you know the ending of this story now?

I check the list just on a fluke and see all the children’s files listed as being returned, though no information has been sent out about what has happened yet. My sweet little girl, however, is listed as “File Under Review.” I gathered the four oldest children and explained to them that the little girl on the computer now has a family seeking to adopt her. Happy/sad We continue to pray for this family and for her to come home soon.

Now it is Friday, February 12th. Christopher and I are home packing up the family to join the church’s youth ski trip to Colorado. I check my emails. “Hmmm…wonder what this one is?” I don’t know what happened first – the scream from utter shock or the tears streaming down my face. I was almost speechless, for a very brief moment. I read the words aloud to Christopher, almost in disbelief. Our agency was requesting that we submit an application so we could be officially approved because her file had been placed on hold for us to review. Here we sat in our kitchen in the midst of a huge Abraham/Isaac moment. This little girl that we gave away to find her forever family was now returning to us.

My fingers zipped over the keys to respond and explain our dilemma. We were leaving town until late the following Tuesday night. Our application would have to wait until our return. So we shared with the four oldest kids when they arrived home from school, but shelved all our jumbled emotions to focus on the family ski trip.

On the bus ride home Tuesday, Christopher and I attempted to complete as much of the application as we could. I typed supporting documents on my laptop as we bumped along. With bleary eyes and totally exhausted, we finished up after tucking the kids in bed and tossing in a few loads of laundry. Wednesday morning dawned with me faxing in our application while the furnace repairman worked on the upstairs igniter that had quite working while we were out of town . (Brrr! What a cold welcome home that was.)

Oh the joy of adoption! The hurry, hurry, rush, rush followed by the waiting. I’m still not good at waiting. After answering some additional questions regarding our application, the waiting began. I sat on pins and needles all day Thursday. Every phone call, every email made me jump with excitement followed by disappointment. Friday morning, I finally gave it all back to God. I am still the busy mom of my five at home. There were still clothes to wash, meals to prepare, shopping to be done, and lessons to prepare for children’s worship on Sunday. Officially our agency had 10 business days to respond. So why was I wasting time worrying about what was totally out of my control?

I’ll give you one guess when my phone rang? Time’s up! I picked the boys up from school and was shopping at Sam’s Club (where my phone usually gets terrible reception). Ring-a-ding! It’s our agency! We’ve been approved…blah…blah…We’ll receive her file for review tonight…blah…Have a great weekend. By six o’clock I held papers in my hand that described our sweet little girl.

So, this is not our plan. It is not on our time table. There are a million questions right now and few answers. But there is one more little girl in China who is my daughter, and she needs to come home. We firmly believe that this is God’s plan for our lives at this time. In the middle of all the questions, we have an incredible peace.

The kids? How are they responding? They love it! All of them. We sat Keziah down and explained to her our plans to bring home another sister, a little sister for her. She is over the moon, head over heels excited! She has already tried to give her a new name. I had to shoot that one down. I’m the Mama so I get naming rights. Shopping with Keziah is a hoot right now because she wanders through the store informing me of everything her little sister NEEDS, “She’s never had a Barbie before in her whole life, Ma.”

We’ve developed a new master plan that involves lots of painting and bedroom swapping for everyone to make room for a new sister. Pink rooms will don blues and grays; blue rooms will be splashed with pink and purple. It is an ingenious plan! By thinking outside of the box, each trio of boys and girls will have two sinks and one tub and shower to share between them.

Time table? We are starting all over again from scratch. Forms, documents, classes, fingerprints, everything has to be gathered for our dossier, and then it will be submitted to China for review and approval. The best estimates I have say that it could take a minimum of nine months but more likely 12 to 18 months before she would be coming home.

Welcome aboard for a new adventure with the Wade family!