Adoption: Officially Introducing Lydia!

The time has finally come, to introduce our daughter Lydia. While we have had our Pre-Approval since last August, I have been hesitant to share our daughter’s information publicly till I was 100% sure we were going to survive the home study process. I also wanted to cherish the little bit of time that our family had with her before we shared with the world. Now that we are in the final months, I wanted to share our story and tell you about the amazing work that God has been doing to bring her home.

Before I give you the introduction, I need to share a little back story.

When we first started to consider adoption, we pretty solid on keeping our current birth order. That means that we would have looked for a child at least 6 months (preferably) 9 months younger than our youngest. There are a host of psychologically good reasons on why most social workers and adoption agencies prefer families to maintain birth order and only a few as to why they would let you stray. And even as I type this, it is still something that I believe to be a best practice. There is plenty of research showing that this is the healthiest choice for a family.

So, now let’s flash forward a bit. But before I do that, I have to share this image of a dream that Lulu had in April of 2015. (click it, it will make the image larger)

Please note the details of the dream and the fact that it was in April of 2015. 

During the summer time, I started feeling the urge to use my blog for social good and start advocating for deaf children on the special focus waiting list. These are children that for whatever reason, may be having more difficult time being placed in families. At the same time, I had several people share a particular sweet little girl with me. Unfortunately she had just had her 4th birthday, so I decided that I had to pass but that I would make her my first advocacy post.

On July 14th, I shared the beautiful story of little Yi and she captured my heart. I deeply wanted her to find a family and despite several people asking me if we would consider her, I repeatedly declined. You see, she wasn’t in our birth order. Adopting her would upset the rules and I am a stickler for rule following.

Until…

I was lying in my bed late one night with Lu and one of my online adoption friends sent me a video. She casually said that they had gotten some new video’s of Yi and wanted to see if I could share them or update my post. Oh her sweet little face. I was watching the video for what was probably the third time, listening to her giggle when Lulu asked to watch.

And before she could even watch for more than about 2 seconds, she adamantly proclaimed, “Mama, that little girl is wearing the dress from my dream but she doesn’t have a Hello Kitty clip. Is she my sister?”

I froze.

That dream. That dream from THREE long months ago. In child time that is forever. That dream that she forced me to listen to. That one where I said God was preparing her heart.

That dream.

With a pink dress with little “heart flowers.” I wasn’t even sure what a heart-flower was.

But I knew then. I know now.

This is a screen shot of the video. Sorry it is a bit fuzzy but I wanted to show you the heart flowers. It’s hard to tell but the dress is a very faded pink.

 

And here is a crop of some of the “heart-flowers” from the video.

And here she is in another video clip we received a month or so later. You can completely tell the dress is light pink and the flowers are true flowers with stems in this one:

 

So lying in bed in late July, I sent my husband the video and said, what do you think…

and he replied.

YES!

But the story doesn’t end there.

Our sweet Lydia was with another agency. We were told that she had a family reviewing her family and that there was a small waiting list of families to see her and that they would only release her if no one chose her before she had to back to the shared list.

Oh, it was heart breaking but being people of faith, we prayed over it and decided we were content that if she was meant to be ours, it would happen.

But remember that sweet Lulu, her dreams and her determination? Do not let her faith be forgotten. Because she knew that this child was part of our family.

On August 11th, while driving in the car, she asked to pray for Yi one more time and so we did. Her prayer was simple, “please let the people not choose her and let her come to our family.”

Now, I would not say that we actually prayed for a family not to choose her. That would be horrible but in the mind of a 6 year old. This is how she understood the situation. She believed that this was her sister. Her heart was given a gift in her dream so for her this was the way it was supposed to end.

So… I arrived  into my office that day and in my inbox was a message from a friend letting me know that her file was going to be returned and and asking if we were still interested.

Almost 5 weeks later.

I AM NOT KIDDING PEOPLE! I COULDN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP IF I TRIED.

The next few days were a whirlwind. Chris and I had to review the Chinese/English translated file. We had to find a doctor that would give us a written opinion and we had to write a statement to the agency holding her file letting them know that we were serious about adopting her so they would release her to our agency.

There is a lot of scary stuff in her file but I truly believe that God’s hand was in this from the beginning and that this little girl is the one that is supposed to be joining our family. On August 18th we submitted our Letter of Intent for Yi Nuo and on August 19th, China gave us pre-approval (PA) to adopt her.

I will tell you right now, that there is nothing stranger than to open an email at 9:00am at work to find out you are going to be a mother again.

Over the past few months we have been able to share our news and pictures personally with family. We are now just waiting for our home study to be signed, sealed and delivered so that we can send our I800a to the US government. We hope to have this little ladybug home in the next few months.

We will be giving her the English name of Lydia Jacquelyn YiNuo and will incorporate her Chinese name into her sign name.

One last picture… Just because!

You can follow our adoption story by reading along here on the blog! I will be posting more and more highlights as we get closer to travel, including fundraising opportunities! All the adoption posts can be found on the tab for adoption.

If you feel so inclined, please continue to pray for our family and for our daughter. She will be leaving everything she knows in China and it will be a very difficult adjustment. As far as we know, her deafness as left her with significant communication and language delays. Please pray for her peace and acceptance of this new process. Specifically pray that her heart is prepared for our arrival. We know that our God can do miracles.