Our lives are different than they were only days ago…we have seen our daughter! And, what a wild few days it has been since that first look at her. I know this post is long, but it only scratches the surface really. This week has been such an experience.

For those of you who don’t know how the system works, in a nutshell, the office in China that handles all the international adoptions for the whole country issues a new list of available children for adoption about every 5 weeks (during our night time, their business day). We had been anticipating the new list for a while. In fact, the 5 weeks had passed, and we were at 7 weeks when it finally came out. We received “the call” on Monday night (1/18). Our social worker, Sarah, was not planning on calling us until Tuesday morning since she was going to be up all night locking files for families. She and I have grown to know each other pretty well over the last 3 years (she has held my hand every step of the way!), and I was disappointed that I would not hear from her in the middle of the night and that one of her associates would be calling Tuesday morning with any potential files for us to consider. I really wanted to hear it from her. But, she had told me that she would catch up with me Tuesday when she returned to the office. And, that was that. But, at 10pm on Monday night, our phone rang with her home number on the caller id. I answered tentatively, and she told us that she had a file for us to look at, and she just couldn’t wait until the morning. So, she sent it right over. We opened the file and saw the teeniest little peanut baby ever. She was born on March 10, 2009 with a straight forward small VSD and PFO (relatively common heart defect) – she is now 10 mo. old. But, her file was from when she was 4 mo. old. And, she was a very very small 4 mo. old at that–the size of what some large newborns in the states are. We read over her file and thought things looked good but her growth was very very poor. Not only was she extremely small in head, length, and weight, but over the 4 months recorded, she had dropped on the growth charts from being at about 25% to being off the chart significantly. I stayed up until maybe 1 am reading every word of her file and researching all I could. We sent her file to multiple doctors right away. No one seemed overly concerned about her heart, but no one was happy about her growth. Tuesday evening ended with me in tears as one particular doctor we trusted was extremely concerned; words such as serious genetic disorder and possibly death were mentioned. We were broken. But, we just felt like it wasn’t fair to this child to make a decision to say no based on 6 month old information. We had already requested an update earlier that day. But, we knew we wouldn’t get it before we had to submit our letter of intent. Our agency gave us 2 options: (1) send in the letter of intent and wait for the update, if is not good, withdraw or (2) do not send in the letter of intent and they would look for another file for us that night when some files locked 48 hours ago were released. I felt like it was a test of my faith. We decided to send in the letter of intent and prayed for specific growth numbers in that update. I looked at those growth charts and just chose certain measurements for each area that would demonstrate amazing growth. Our doctors told us it would be a miracle alone.

At 8:30 last night (1/20), 36 hours after we requested the update, Sarah called us again from home. She had decided to check her work email and our update had just come in only minutes earlier. Not only had she met the measurement numbers we had prayed specifically for, she surpassed them a little. Absolutely miraculous. And, we got new pictures we got to see for the first time with Sarah giggling in the background in which she looked healthy and strong…and, of course, beautiful. And, they told us she is crawling very well. We laughed out loud in praise of the God who works miracles! We sent the update to two doctors who contacted us within an hour–they too were shocked. They cannot come up with any reason for the turn around. One doctor simply said, “God’s hand was on this child.”

Monday, as we prepared for the shared list to come out that night, I opened up my Bible Study notebook to complete my homework for that week and the passage to study (ironically) was when Abraham sent his servant to act as matchmaker and find a match for his son Isaac—that would be Rebekah. I dug right into that passage and found so much that I could apply to our situation that very day as we entrusted Sarah to make a match for us. One of the things that particularly impressed me was how the servant had prayed very specifically for how he would know that he found the right girl for Isaac. After he finds Rebekah and is retelling the story, he says that before he was even finished speaking his prayer in his heart, God answered it. That is exactly how we feel today. Before we were even finished praying, God had already answered our prayers to grow our sweet Lydia months earlier.

This morning, as we were enjoying celebrating and trying to find our family (I just finally reached my parents at 9:30 tonight since they were on a plane to Beijing themselves that left yesterday), Sarah forwarded me an email that made her take pause and brought me to tears. The email was dated March 10, 2009, the very day that our Lydia was born. The email was sent to her with our application to join the special needs program. In the email, I explained that we wanted to join the special needs program though we were unsure whether our daughter would come to us through it. We were fearful and had reservations. But, I wrote that we felt compelled to get on the list because we knew we needed to be open to what God had for us, whatever, whoever that might be. I am so amazed that we joined the program–unsure, but we did it, stepping out in faith—on the day our daughter was born.

We are not permitted to post pictures of our baby girl just yet–we must get official approval from China first. So, you’ll have to settle for this. As you can see, my let’s-catch-this-significant-moment-for-the-family-on-video image in my mind never exactly is what I imagined.

What didn’t make it on video…Ashlyn is concerned about if Lydia will sleep in our room or her room (I think she thinks she is going to be the mama). She was very proud to tell us she would say “Ni hao” when she meets her for the first time. Evan is concerned about her learning English (“How is she going to know what we’re saying?”). I think he thinks that she will only speak Chinese…forever. And, Drew answered the question, “So, what do you think of your new sister?” with “She’s not a sister. She’s a baby.” I guess he thinks sisters only come in a 6 year old body.