1. My son was born there
2. They can get your order at McDonald’s 100% accurate even though there is a total language barrier.
3. The people are gracious, kind, and steeped in tradition and culture.
On January 26, 2008 we finally made it back to US soil after spending 16 days traveling China to complete the adoption process of our son. He was two at the time and I look back over the past four years at how much he has grown and how much he has changed our lives and I know that I have been forever touched by the hand of God.
As a child I knew that both a very close cousin and my grandfather were both adopted. Both adoptions were for different reasons, under different circumstances, and of course in two very different eras. Nonetheless, after knowing their stories and understanding how selfless adoption is I decided at a very young age that I wanted to one day adopt.
When Clint and I were dating in the early 1990’s and discussing our future I mentioned that I wanted to adopt. He response was that he too wanted to adopt, specifically a little boy from China. I laughed it off because at that time in history international adoptions from China were rare and those that were happening were most certainly not male children.
After being married a few years we decided it was time to start planning our family. But as the old saying goes, “Man plans, God laughs.” This was not good news for me as I am the ultimate planner. Hard to believe I know. I fought God for a long time on this issue as I have never really been intimidated by confrontation. I used science to my advantage and filled my body with hormones and fertility inducing drugs. I laid upside down, had a chart and thermometer beside my bed. We spun sperm, counted days, and went through the process of insemination. More than once. Not fun by the way. Pretty painful actually.
I had been challenged and I did not like it. I did not like that my plan was more than a year behind schedule. It quite pissed me off to be honest. How dare MY timeline be questioned? I was not going to accept the possibility of no children. It was not.going.to.go.down.that.way.for.me. In the meantime I research alternatives and adoption. Both options were super expensive for a young couple living on one income while I was finishing college. But I kept that giant maroon binder with ill-gotten copies of copyrighted material (see how desperate I was to resort to copyright infringement?) on the top shelf in my closet ‘for whenever I needed it’.
After two years of battling infertility (AKA God’s Plan) I was tired. No, scratch that. I was broken. “Okay fine God, you win.” As if we didn’t all see THAT outcome coming. So in October of 1995 I didn’t renew my fertility drug prescription. I told my doctor that I “needed a break to focus on my last semester of college”. What I needed was to let go. So I let go. I gave everything up. I mean I gave everything UP. I let go to let God. Trust me, relinquishing control is probably one of the most difficult things for me to do, even to this day. It felt like I was living my life like I was trapped in a pair of Chinese handcuffs. The harder I fought, the tighter the hold was. And just like when your fingers are trapped in Chinese handcuffs, as soon as you relax, stop struggling, and relinquish control…you are freed. Three months after I let go I found myself in the ER in the middle of the night with a rupturing ovarian cyst and a positive pregnancy test that I didn’t believe was mine. Morgan was born that October.
The day that she had her four month checkup scheduled I too had a checkup scheduled. I found myself staring at the business end of a positive pregnancy test. This was before the internet lingo was big so when I say I had a WTH moment I mean I literally said, “What the hell? Whose test is that?” I was in shock and that is putting it mildly. I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony…which by the way, the true definition of irony is – God’s sense of humor. In shock, I drove almost an hour to my husband’s work to hand deliver the positive pregnancy test. His reaction? “Whose test is that?” The next October, ten days after Morgan’s first birthday, Madison was born.
Life kept us busy for a while. In July 2006 we were enjoying some wine at a winery in Fredericksburg, Texas when the topic of another child came up again. Again, he said he wanted to adopt a boy from China. I honestly didn’t think it could be done or done easily and I thought he was screwing with me so I would drop the topic of another kid. You would think after being married for so long he would know me better than that by then. When I finally mentioned that I was serious about him either getting on board with another child or getting on board with a vasectomy we started talking. A few bottles of wine later we decided that we did want to adopt but would take some time to research the process and the costs, try to pay off some debts, and spend a considerable amount of time praying for guidance to lead us to do the right thing. So that is exactly what we did.
A few weeks later I got a call from the college asking if I wanted to interview for a part time position that I had previously applied for…three years earlier. I took that as a sign. I did my paperwork and began my new part time job on a Sunday afternoon shift. The full time employee I was working with a woman about my age so as we got to know one another the topic naturally turned to children. She shared with me that she had a two year old son and a two year old son. Wait…what?? To clarify, she had a two year old biological son and a two year old adopted son…and in fact, she was leaving a few months later to pick him up and finalized the adoption paperwork. She would be leaving at the end of October for…China. I know, it seems almost like a cheesy movie and if you didn’t live it I can see how it would be difficult to believe. I took it as a sign. I was almost too excited to get home and tell Clint who was, by Clint standards, excited. The next week before I was able to go back and ask her the list of questions that we had prepared we were lying in bed watching a new episode of The Office where Michael comes in and announces that, after watching Oprah, he has decided to adopt a baby from China. I sat up in bed, looked and Clint, and said something to the effect of, “Seriously?”
A few months later, while my friend was in China picking up her son, we signed with an adoption agency and started the journey to adoption. That was November 2006. We specified we wanted a boy age 1 month to 3 years old and selected a few from a long list of “special needs” that we would be willing to accept. When we signed the wait time was about 18 months. By the first of the New Year the wait had climbed to 24 months and counting. That July the agency changed the way it handled waiting child adoptions from posting a list and allowing families to apply to requiring families to complete an application and would then match waiting children to families. I filled out the application and submitted it.
In August, right as I was going back to work the agency called. A few stressful days of phone tag finally ended when the agency finally reached me only to tell me that they had a match for us and were sending us a file for review. We had about 3 days to have his file reviewed and then let them know our decision. I raced home and opened the file and immediately knew that the pictures I was looking at were that of our son, Eli. After having the medical files reviewed and accepting the referral we waited for travel arrangements.
We left for China on January 10th, 2008 and came home on January 26th, just 15 months since signing the adoption agency papers. After experiencing this life I have no doubt that I have been touched by the hand of God. To shorten our 16 day trip and the emotional journey to just a few sentences seems unjust but thankfully I blogged the entire emotional journey because sometimes, just sometimes, the truth is stranger than fiction.
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