Where Are We Now?

Below is the update that we sent to our church's prayer ministry, after last night's consultation and some prayer and talk-time with our kids. Please continue to pray for us - we have until Friday afternoon to make a final decision . . .

It's 6:45 a.m. and I've been up for almost an hour now, thinking and praying and seeking the Lord. I slept deeply and felt refreshed, and with as fast as my mind was whirling last night at 10, that's a huge praise the Lord for me! You know it's big when I'm up before 7 a.m. and in bed before 11 p.m. :)

Here's the summary of last night's consultation and the update: The doctor raised some good, valid concerns to consider. Certainly not "deal breakers" as she kept putting it, but things that we might need to know more about before we finalize a decision. It turns out that the original diagnosis is not likely correct, and that what they did operate on was in many ways less severe with fewer long term consequences. That's the good news. The bad news is that she is low on the growth curves and there's not a ton of documentation about her growth and specifically her measurements since the surgery. As there are several questions about her overall health (since the surgery), we have requested that our agency seek more information about her. We are waiting for a response from them today. It is HIGHLY likely that we may never have these further questions answered.

So Todd and the kids and I need to determine how comfortable we are with the "not knowing." With any adoption, there is a degree of unknown and the degree of unknown's just skyrocketed when they handed us a picture and a medical history (SKETCHY though it may be!). We knew this going in two years ago, we knew it when we joined the special needs list, it's just another thing to face it with a child actually attached to the questions now.

We need continued prayer for discernment and wisdom. But the biggie now is that we need God to move on our behalf IN CHINA to release more information about her health history - specifically about her growth measurements at 5 months and currently. The information we've been going from is 7 months old (not unusual in Chinese adoptions!). Please also pray that we continue to seek HIM first and not get caught up in the emotions of it all (it's VERY emotional, and that's a hard request to admit!). We have until Friday afternoon to make our final decision to accept or pass on this child.

If you can, please direct the prayer warriors to our blog (address below) - as we will be updating soon for this purpose. It's too hard to keep sending out individual emails with all the updates - with all of the end of the year activities, I'm in and out of the house all day today and tomorrow.

Finally, the Lord has been speaking to me from Psalm 34, Psalm 37:1-8, and Psalm 46. Please pray with us that His purposes for us will be made clear as we wait on Him! There's a lot of "be still's" in those verses and a lot of "he delivered's" and the recurring themes are His sheltering, refuge nature. We crave that today!

Thanks for your support and prayers. You can't know how much it means to all of us that you are standing with us in this journey.