Two years ago today we were on our way to China, a trip that would change everything.
Nice photo bomb, Trev. 🙂
Just three weeks later, we would officially make the decision to adopt. The hopeful, determined people we are, we thought we’d bring our daughter home about a year later. Precious, isn’t it? 😉
The Lord simply had other plans. Fundraising went quickly (though we’re still in it, applying for grants during this waiting period), paperwork was processed at rapid speed, and everything seemed to fall into place. And then, we waited…and waited.
That is where we find ourselves today – waiting. Obviously you have all felt the affects of this pandemic the last 2-3 weeks. However, we’ve been feeling it for well over 2 months. You see, the Corona virus hit our daughter’s home of China much earlier, and by mid-January it became apparent that our plans were going to be derailed. We were set to pick her up at the end of February, but just weeks before, everything was postponed indefinitely.
Here’s the most important thing – she is safe and healthy. While our daughter’s city was not placed under strict quarantine, her orphanage was. She and the other children were not allowed outside, and very few people were allowed to enter. In the midst of it all, we received the most wonderful pictures and video of her, playing and laughing in blissful ignorance. It’s sad to think of her not seeing the sun shine day to day, but we took comfort knowing she was being cared for and kept healthy.
The latest is this – we have no idea when we will travel to pick up our daughter. Seriously, none. We are being more cautious with our thoughts these days, and so our hope now is to bring her home in 2020. We shall see.
The kids and I are memorizing Psalm 145 at the moment so I recite this often:
“The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made.”
I never intended for this to become an every-three-months blog, but sometimes even our best intentions do not come to fruition. So without further ado, here is the latest and greatest in the Van Reed adoption adventure.
When I last posted, it was October and we were waiting for that month’s list to be released. October and November both came and went and the file we had been waiting for was not made available. In December, our agency called to inform us that her orphanage had put a hold on all adoptions. We were told they were doing some “internal restructuring” and therefore would not be processing any files. The timeline for this was indefinite, so we were forced to make the decision to move on with a different file. This was a sad day as much of what we had anticipated from the beginning came to a close. We grieved what we imagined could have been with that little girl, but didn’t spend much time in that place. God planned this from the beginning, so we thanked Him for the baby who opened our hearts to adoption and the ability to love another child like our own, then turned our minds to what was yet in store for us.
Only days later we anticipated the December list to be released, but the adoption journey is never a straight road, and we were thrown yet another curve. Our caseworker notified us that, only days prior, China had changed their matching process. No longer would there be a list which from which our agency could select a file. Now, there would be a different type of file-release, our agency would select one, then China would need to select us for that file. So, our agency did just this, found us a file, submitted our names…and we were not selected. As you can imagine, this was disheartening and we suddenly started to fear never been chosen.
The “old system” of locking in a file without having to then be chosen still applied to children with much more severe medical needs. While most of these children have needs beyond what we feel called to care for, our caseworker told us she would check the list just in case and let us know if she foresaw a match. That Friday came and went and we did not hear from her so we assumed she had not found a suitable file. When the list was released on Tuesday, I didn’t even think to check my email, having not received any pre-notice of a possible match. So you can imagine how many emotions started flooding in when I saw the email Tuesday afternoon that we had a match!! Attached to the email was a 23 page medical report replete with photos and detailed information. We had until Friday morning to make a decision, so the clock was ticking.
We scheduled a call with a doctor from CHOP who would review her file with us and give us a clear understanding of what they saw in the report. We took the call at Justin’s office on Thursday, and it lasted a little over an hour. It was a lot of information to process. When the call ended, we didn’t have time to discuss the details as we were hosting a Christmas party for our neighbors within the hour, and I needed to get home. After putting the kids to bed around 10pm, I then had to wrap Levi’s birthday gifts as the boy was turning 9 the very next day! So around 11pm, the night before we had to submit an acceptance notice, we finally had the chance to talk it all out. The conversation went like this:
Renee: “Um, we should probably talk about this at some point.”
Justin: “Well, I think we both know what we’re going to do.”
Renee: “Ok, but maybe we should say it?”
Justin: “We’re going to adopt this little girl.”
With each other, we very much tell it how it is. Not willing to wait til the morning, I emailed our caseworker an emphatic YES!, and just like that, we were MATCHED!!
Our daughter turned three on December 5th (just a week before we received her file). She is a happy girl with precious cheeks and a personality we think will bring so much joy to her siblings. We are told she loves the outdoors and playing with her toys. We have several pictures and even the sweetest video, but we are withholding them from the internet until she is home. If you see either of us in person, feel free to ask. We are always happy to share!
Since then, it’s been a blur of paperwork (some that literally bringing on tears), signatures, notarized forms, medical jargon, and more paperwork. Oh, and waiting. Lots and lots of waiting.
But we are now finally in the homestretch and estimated to travel around the end of February! We are waiting for our final check mark (travel approval) before we schedule our flights. Renee’s dad will be traveling with us, acting as our personal paparazzi while we are there, which everyone has been very excited to hear. We are thrilled for him to witness the mayhem first-hand. Meanwhile the kids will be staying with Justin’s parents, Paul and Tammy. God just may have a special place in heaven for grandparents who are willing to take three grandkids for two weeks time with only a weeks notice.
Finally, a word on the coronavirus. Many have asked if it is going to hinder our travels, and honestly, we don’t know. Currently American and United are not offering flights to China, but we aren’t flying this week or even in the next couple weeks. If the virus eases up a bit and travel becomes an option again, we hope to go on schedule. We just have no way of knowing as reports on the virus change every day. The timing of it all seems to be the worst, but such is the life of being people who want it all in our timing. God’s timing is not our own, and we’re learning it first-hand once again.
On the beach two days before Christmas. Getting back there this week. Even in the winter, it’s our happy place. A place to breath deeper, move slower, and reset.
Hello all! Yes, we are still here and YES the adoption process is still underway. Some time in June, I took to recording live videos on social media. I have been using these as an outlet for quick updates ever since. It’s simply easier to click “Go Live” and verbally update everyone as to where we are in the process. However, I realize that when I say update “everyone” it’s not actually everyone. I apologize if you are one of those less informed few. Many of you I have spoken with in-person and have been able to provide all the latest info, but today I’m here for anyone who is left wondering.
Last I posted, we were waiting for our little girl’s name to be on the list that is released monthly. June, July, August, and September all passed with her name not on that list. October has arrived, and we are fully anticipating that we should be made known of this month’s list today. Oddly, I haven’t heard from my caseworker yet despite typically hearing in the morning. So there’s a chance there won’t even be an October list and it will be available next week. If I were being wise, I would wait to publish this until after I confirm with my caseworker today, but then I risk never remember to publish it at all. If we hear from her, I’ll try to get back here with that update.
If her name is not on this next release, we will wait again. We have loosely agreed that we will wait through the end of the year. If her name is not released by the end of the year, we will likely have to take another file because we are rapidly approaching expiration dates of some of our paperwork, namely our home study.
Once matched, we will travel roughly 9,000 signatures and 2-3 months later. We need to have her in our home no later than May to avoid expiration dates.
In the meantime, summer days and nights have turned into fall festivities, and we continue to wait.
As cliché as it sounds, it feels like just yesterday I was typing, “Today She Is 2”. In the blink of an eye, an entire year has passed, and now she is three.
As I type this, I’m sitting out on my driveway, hosting another yard sale – this time selling things to help out another family. But it’s reminding me of last summer when we held a two-day adoption fundraiser sale that was larger than anything we could have imagined. We’ve done a lot this past year. We’ve sweated it out in the summer heat, delivered home-cooked meals in the fall, and hand-crafted ornaments in the winter. All the while, we’ve filled out endless forms and written papers about our lives that took hours.
Likely her year was more exciting than ours though. She likely learned to walk. She probably started to talk. She may have even started eating solid foods. Things she could not do when we met her a few months before her 2nd birthday. Big milestones. And while we could lament having missed them, we are just eager to have the opportunity to witness all those that are to come.
Today, in honor of her birthday, I will make a strawberry rhubarb pie (selfishly, my favorite, though I know no one else will complain). We will look at her sweet pictures and wonder about who she is becoming and be grateful for the past year we’ve had to anticipate her possible arrival.
Wow, I knew it had been a while since I last posted, but two months?! If this is your main source of updates on our adoption, I apologize for the extended silence. Let me tell you, you have missed SO MUCH and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING all at the same time!
Two posts back you read that our dossier was submitted to China. All that has been processed. We are currently waiting on a referral (a child’s file) then hopefully a match (accepting said file). Once we reached this stage, our caseworker again emphasized how little our chances were of receiving our little girl’s file, but we told her we were not giving up. So she held off for over a month on sending us any other child referrals.
Meanwhile, we had sent multiple requests to our girl’s orphanage to reserve her file for us. That is, once she has a file. Though the process of creating her a file was started a while back, it came to a standstill for some unidentified reason. So while we had little chance of receiving her file once it was processed, the chances of it being processed any time soon were looking bleak.
About three weeks ago, I received the news I had been hoping against since we started – our girl’s orphanage had gotten back to our caseworker with a firm NO. They would not be reserving our girl’s file for us. Which meant, once her paperwork was processed (could be another 6 months before they started, then 2 months to complete), her file would go onto a shared list which is released once a month, then our agency would have to compete against all other agencies in the world who have families wanting young, fairly healthy Chinese girls (basically all agencies) to reserve her file. This computer “race” is completed in a manner of seconds, literally. So we were looking at possibly an 8-10 month wait for her to be released to the list and someone else to likely lock her file in first. My caseworker very kindly said, in more or less words, “It’s time to let go, and move on.” I cry a lot of tears maybe twice a year, and this was once of those times.
So we made the decision that we would start accepting other referrals. Now, orphans in China are classified as either “special” or “non-special”. Those monthly released files I mentioned before are “non-special” children. Typically they have less severe medical needs and are younger in age. “Special” orphans have more severe medical needs, tend to be older, and are released daily into the system of children eligible for adoption. So the next week my caseworker contacted us with a “special” file they had on hand. Unfortunately the needs were greater than we felt called to handle at this time, so we declined before even taking the file. To date, this is the closest we have come to a referral.
The next shared list of non-special files was scheduled to be released today. Once we accepted that things were just not going to work out with our little girl, we confirmed with our caseworker that she could plan to find a file for us today. I should note, just because we’re ready to receive a file, doesn’t mean we’ll get one. Again, this file release time is competitive, so our caseworker informed us it could take a couple tries (read, a couple months) to find a referral for us. Last week I had myself mentally geared up for moving on, and then another email comes through…
My caseworker received updated information that our little girl’s paperwork had been started! Furthermore, her required medical exam had begun! Furthermore, at some point we weren’t completely eliminated from thought because our agency was made aware of this fact, as were some friends in China who have been advocating for us out there! Can you see why I titled this “Rollercoaster?”
My caseworker herself stated this was very good news. Our friends in China encouraged us to request a reservation of her file and, hardly the type to avoid stubbornness, we requested our agency do that again. So last Friday when my agency needed confirmation as to whether we wanted them to find us a referral today, we changed our answer once more to a no (they weren’t surprised).
That brings us to today! It’s been three months of waiting, receiving disappointing news, encouraging news, and no news. I had heard at the beginning of this journey that the waiting would be the hardest to which I laughed – there’s always something to do to keep you busy, right?! And while life continues on – kids finish co-op, play sports, drive me nuts and make me laugh, dinners get cooked, house gets cleaned – there is nothing I can do to keep the adoption process “busy.” I simply must wait. And guess what I have discovered? It’s the hardest part.
“Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!”
When Justin and I were in the early phases of the adoption, before we had really decided even, we both read a lot of books about adoption and the orphan crisis. There was no paperwork yet or applications due, just time to think and decide. Those books were eye opening in so many ways, and we learned so much.
Once we got deeper into the process, we were learning just by living it. “Oh, this is what a home study is really like” or “Wow, the USCIS has a really long wait on a Monday morning” or “Grant applications are really tedious at times”. On and on we were learning as we went.
Now we’ve returned to a time of stillness. Our dossier is in China being translated and approved which will take another 4-6 weeks. Our little girl’s file is being processed and completed. Our match won’t be finalized til the end of the month or possibly not til April. We’ve received one grant acceptance (more on that later!) and likely won’t hear from the next one until early May. So now we wait.
While we wait, I’m burying myself in more books. The earlier books spoke primarily of the orphan crises, why one decides to adopt, and what the Bible says about adoption. Suddenly though I feel this pressure of you’re going to have another child soon and there’s a part of me that is thinking I have no clue what I’ve gotten myself into.
Justin astutely asked me recently, “What books did you read before the kids were born?” to which I replied, “I think I finished the first two chapters of What to Expect When You’re Expecting…”. I can’t imagine being any less prepared than we were when Jonah was born. His was the first diaper either of us had ever changed. Heck, he slept in his car seat for the first month on an end table next to my bed cause that’s they only place I could get him to sleep and that’s normal, right?! We were clueless, yet that boy is kind and smart as can be because God shows mercy to the lost, and boy were we lost when it came to parenting a baby!
So part of me laughs each time I pick up these books thinking how they may do nothing to help me navigate the murky waters of raising a child with early trauma and grief. I may read them and never remember what I thought I learned. But for now, they’re such a comfort. I feel like I’m doing something. There is also reassurance reading from those who have gone on before me.
At the end of the day though, I know God will again show us his mercy on those days when we are lost and no amount of reading is guiding us through the dark.
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:22-23
I have been willing myself to sit down and write this for nearly a week now. It’s wordy, it’s confusing, and it makes me cry if I dwell on it too much. But, now is the time. Kids, enjoy your extra screen time while Momma gets this done!
Let’s start with the happy, exciting news – our dossier was mailed out to China last Friday! Right on schedule because if I haven’t said it enough yet – our placing agency is awesome. Mailed out Friday and expected to arrive this past Monday. It takes around 4-6 weeks to translate and approve this packet that contains our lives in paper form. So we have been anticipating waiting that long before reaching the point of being matched with a child. UNTIL…
Our caseworker actually informed us last week that once the dossier is received it takes about a week to register it and that once it’s registered we can be matched. Much sooner than we anticipated! All good news.
And while being matched is the single most biggest part in this process for us (second only to bringing the child home), it’s also the scariest. As most of you know, but I’ll reiterate if you’re new around these parts, Justin and I met a little girl when we were in China last April. Met her, spent hours with her, held her, rocked her – basically in a nutshell, we left chunks of our hearts with that girl that have only attached on stronger throughout the last 10 months of this adoption process. However, with China, you can’t simply say, “I want that one” and get what you want. It just doesn’t work that way. We knew were weren’t guaranteed this little girl and said we wouldn’t get our hopes up but guys, 10 months can be a long time sometimes so getting attached and calling her by name and dreaming of her being a part of our family was inevitable.
So what needs to happen in order for us to be matched with her? Well, for that I am going to copy and paste the explanation our caseworker sent us:
Currently the CCCWA is updating the shared list on a monthly basis. They will notify all agencies a few days in advance. If the orphanage submits (your girl’s) file to CCCWA without recommendation for your family, the referral will be posted on the shared list, and we will do our best to lock her file for you. But please understand that can’t be guaranteed, because so many agencies are competing. If the orphanage recommends you when they submit (your girl’s) file to CCCWA, we will contact the CCCWA and request the referral to be assigned to you particularly. Therefore, the matching timeframe really depends on when her referral is available and whether the orphanage can make a recommendation and the CCCWA accepts the recommendation.
Got all that? We read it and we mostly get it – there’s always little things that pop up that throw wrenches into the process. Whether you get it or not, it all boils down to the fact that a lot of things needs to line up just right for this to happen for us.
So now we are faced with the thoughts that she may not be ours to raise. That the plans we have drawn up in our head that seem so good and right may still not be what God has planned for us. And that hurts. We have been here before. We have prayed for things before that were goodthings. Things we wanted so badly it hurt beyond description. And we’ve heard God say no and know the pain of those moments. And if we’re being honest, we don’t want to feel that pain again, but there’s a chance that’s where we’re headed. We’ve perhaps avoided acknowledging this fact because it always seemed so far off – there were so many other hurdles to jump before we had to think about it. Now we’ve arrived. It’s a quick waiting game before we know.
Now we need to make something clear before anyone gets confused. If we are not matched with the little girl we have requested, we will accept another match.At the end of this journey, we will welcome a little girl into our family. To say not being matched with our intended girl will cause sadness doesn’t detract from the love we will have for another child. We are simply being honest about where we are at this time. We will love whatever child God has planned for us because it’s His plan and we love and trust Him.
I shared all this with our church family last Sunday evening, and then we closed out the service with my favorite hymn, “It Is Well with My Soul.”
We last updated that our application with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) was on hold due to the government shut down. We also updated you on our recent change in caseworkers. Late last week I was giving it some more thought and it dawned on me that our previous caseworker was following up on our application up until her very last day working for our placing agency. This, however, was after the government had already shut down. It only then dawned on me that perhaps she was checking because she knew applications may still be approved despite the shutdown status. I immediately emailed our current caseworker and asked that she follow up with them. She got back to me that same day and said we had been assigned an officer which was a huge step in the right direction. She was hopeful we would hear back by Tuesday of this week. Well Tuesday came and went and Wednesday right along with it. I reached out again last night for a follow up.
All day today it rained which, if you live in the South Jersey area, you know it’s hardly justice to simply say it rained. It rained in torrents with winds that were rattling our older windows. Several times the kids remarked they thought our house may be blown away. And of course it was dark.
Then in the late afternoon I received an email. Our application had been APPROVED. It was no longer pending or in review, it was approved! And after forwarding that news to Justin, the sun started shining and I mean shining. It was suddenly so bright I immediately ran outside certain I’d catch a rainbow to which Levi told me, “The sun is too bright for a rainbow!” He was right – the sun was just so bright!
The clouds had finally parted in all sense of those words. In fact, in her email to me my caseworker actually wrote, “Finally finally it comes!”
So where does this leave us? I feel like we’ve been on a roller coaster with some small hills and a couple fast turns and most recently a slow chug up the biggest hill, and now I’m anticipating the drop.
Once our approval from USCIS is in-hand our caseworker will authenticate it, add it to our dossier, then send that off to China. We will finally cross the border and be made known (on paper at least) as another American couple wanting to adopt from their country. They will need to translate and approve our dossier, which will take roughly 6 weeks. Once approved, we will be eligible to be matched with a child which is when the trickiness of being matched with our chosen little girl will come into play. Our agency is already preparing for that so we are trusting they’ll pull through for us in every way possible.
So while it sounds like we’re just facing another 6 months of quiet waiting (we are) that is a time period that will fly. And at the other end is a match with the child God has for us!
Wow, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?! I didn’t mean to let five weeks slip on by, but I guess we can all admit that the Christmas season isn’t one that lends itself to lots of free time. But we had a wonderful Christmas and New Year soaking up every moment of fun and reflection.
This year’s Christmas photo replete with missing front teeth, growing locks, and overall cuteness beyond measure.
So, here’s the latest on the adoption process!
Grant applications – So. Many. Grant. Applications. Currently I am working on our 8th and 9th grant applications. Granted (sorry, but the “grant” puns are just too easy) those numbers may not sound that large. But most of these grants take several hours to complete over the course of several nights none of which are consecutive so really it gets dragged out to several weeks. Of course understand, I’m not complaining. The financial help these offer far outweighs the requirements. I’m just drawing a picture for those of you who may not be applying for grants at this time in your life. Juniors and seniors in high school who are applying for scholarships – I feel your pain. So far only one has been reviewed (and respectfully denied…). All others are pending review.
Government – Meanwhile, our dossier that is being sent to China to request we adopt one of their country’s children is short only one document. That document is currently in the hands of the Dept. of Homeland Security waiting approval on their end. Unfortunately due to our country’s current government status, that document is going nowhere fast. There’s only one thing I can say about this – God knew. God knew exactly when we would submit that document (before the shutdown) and he knew exactly when the government would close its doors. He also knows when they’ll reopen. He knows it all. So I will do my part of patiently waiting and trusting (and of course asking my caseworker if there’s a workaround – there is not).
Goodbyes – Speaking of our caseworker…We were assigned a placing agency caseworker upon starting this journey back in May. She has been with us every step of the way and to say we adore her would be an understatement. She has gone above and beyond for us, contacting our girl’s home orphanage for updates, contacting our home study agency when they were moving slow, and guiding us through the process when we were blind to most of it (insert Birdbox meme here because I think they’re all hilarious). In December we were informed that she would be leaving our agency, and we would be assigned a new caseworker. We were so sad. I honestly didn’t imagine having to finish this process out without her. We wished her a very heartfelt and thankful goodbye and welcomed our new caseworker into our crazy (ie, asking her how to bypass the government shutdown). And she showed up in a big way mentioning that she has a good relationship with the medical center our little girl is currently living in and would request pictures, updates, and a full medical report. Yes please! We will take all the info!
Goodness – Through it all, God has been good. When we last posted at the beginning of December, we were $400 short our next paperwork payment. We blinked and suddenly we had that money and all the money we will need for all paperwork from this point forward. Everything we pay, fundraise, or are granted now goes towards travel costs and the orphanage donation! I think we literally sputtered when we realized it. What? How? When? Why? Really, why? Why is God so kind time and time again? Why does he love us so much? We are so undeserving, but we are so acutely aware of how good He is to us.
We are drawing to a close on our Christmas ornament fundraiser! Almost all packages were mailed earlier this week (check your mailboxes!) with just one more to send out. After that, there are two more sets to be delivered/picked up and they will all be distributed!
But let’s step back a second and recognize just how surreal this experience was for us. Justin got wind of this idea back in October, but there weren’t many specifics to be found online so we had to design it as we went. We debated how many ornaments to make, how to list them, and so on. Once settled, I researched every avenue of homemade ornaments, and we got to work!
I mean it when I say this was a family effort. The kids got straight to work on the first night. Anyone who received a popsicle stick ornament should know that Madeline hand-painted each and every popsicle stick over the course of a few nights. The “Jingle Bell” ornaments were entirely Jonah’s idea. Levi tore and stuffed all the cotton for the snowman glass balls and painted each of the lightbulbs with Justin completing the second coats. Justin also planned and drilled all of the action figure ornaments (which, he probably would like me to point out, were some of the first to go). I designed and created the sports ornaments (note to self, Eagles sell faster than Phillies, ha!) and hand-painted both peg nativity scenes. In total, it took about a month to complete.
The night before we listed them, I “realistically” stated that they would likely not all be claimed. Honestly my so-called realism was just doubt. Doubts that would be blasted out of the water the next day.
I wish I had recorded the actual numbers, but within 24 hours I believe 40 of the 50 ornaments had been claimed. The requests were flooding in, and I was glued to my computer to mark them off as they were claimed. Four days after we went live, we were sold out!
We knew the potential this fundraiser could have if they were to all sell, but we never expected how above and beyond the potential we would land. I’m not sure why we don’t come to expect these things at this point – God has truly placed some of the most giving people in our lives.
Our grand total raised was $1,690!
This put us so very close to our next goal. Currently we have an application in with the Dept. of Homeland Security to approve us to bring an adopted child from China into the country. Next Monday, we get our second round of fingerprinting completed. Once that’s submitted and we receive their approval, our dossier will be ready to go to China. We need to send $3,050 along with that packet and we have about $2,600 so far. Just over $400 to go!
Meanwhile, we sent two grant applications this past week and have another deadline at the end of the month. There are several to send out after the new year as well.
As we’re now in the thick of the holiday season, I find myself thinking, “This is the last Thanksgiving without her” or “Next year, her face will be on this Christmas card” or “Next year there will be four kids to buy presents for” (!!)
We are so close. And we have so many of you to thank for getting us this far. I wrote this to many of you who purchased ornaments, but it extends to so many more people – The Lord has truly blessed us through each of you.
The Van Reed Family Adoption 