INSIDE OUT

Just got off the phone with the adoption agency. Long story short... We're not adopting the three year old girl.

To give you a few details, I called today to say that our family was making the tough call to potentially decline the adoption of this little girl. Strangely enough, it turns out that they have another family who also would like to adopt her... AND her sister!! If you ask me, it was God leading us into a scenario where we could make a decision and feel its peace surrounding us.

You might be wondering why we would potentially say no to this little girl. Well, as you may have already been curious about the mention of her sister, in receiving a few more facts, it turns out that the three year old girl has a six year old sister. Now, of course they wouldn't give us the details of this little six year old but we have to consider three other children in our world. Here's where some of the factors made our choice most difficult:

1. We didn't want to see a sibling group split up. Apparently, they've been trying to adopt these girls separately and they simply have not been able to. So they have to make the tough call to split them up for the sake of each child. They would have a much better chance to be adopted if there were only one of them. The tough decision to separate them happened before my very first phone call to them. A tough decision, indeed, for the agency to make and I have to trust they did everything they could to keep them together.

2. What is our family comfortable with? Well, am I comfortable with adopting one, knowing there is a sibling left behind? Am I comfortable with saying no to this six year old... even it wasn't even an option to adopt them both (which it turned out was the case after the decision had already been made)? Would I be comfortable with the open adoption, we would have had to have, with this six year old without also taking her?

3. We were moving away from her sister. I knew it would be SO important to continue the bond between each sister. We would have written and phoned as often as needed. However, it would have been "best" for the three year old to stay in this province in order to visit with her more often than we'd have been able to.

THIS CHAPTER IS CLOSED

We are not in this endeavour for ourselves. We cannot make the emotional decision, to excitedly raise the first child who comes to us, when we truly know that this little girl deserves more. We know there are so many hurting children out there who need us. We will be there for them if we are the best for them.

SO WHAT NOW?

Well, other than the fact we are planning on moving to another province. It is best we wait and get connected to the agency there. Once settled into our new home, we will transfer our papers, have our home study and work in close connection with that particular agency. They could then get to know us as a family and make the best decision for a young child. We are still excited at the potential to change the life of someone who would barely be considered to have had one, only moments before.

Knowing more than I did even a month ago, so many children are out there, desperate for somewhere to call home. As much as Haiti needs our help financially (as well as many other countries), children in our own "backyard" are searching for love right here. Many foster families are overrun, over-stretched, over-stressed and the children suffer the most.

Searching for attachment, searching for identity, searching for a world where, leaving everything they know in mere minutes, isn't knocking down their deepest, inner-most fears.