#6 This Was Not What I Had in Mind

Let’s go back to May 2011 – yes I know I keep doing that J But, well, a lot happened on that trip!  In May 2011 I went back to Ethiopia for the first time since bringing Eli home.  The trip was amazing and one of the amazing things that happened on that trip was the kids we met at Acacia Village.  If you’ll remember from a previous post, Acacia Village is a transition home for an adoption agency.  So, the kids we met there were basically just waiting for the legal processing to occur so they could go home with their families. 

What I mean by all this is to say that while I saw some older kids being adopted when we got Eli, up until this trip I had always envisioned we would still adopt a really young one if/when we adopted again.  This trip opened my eyes to the Most Amazing Kids!  And they were all OLDER!  The kids we worked with were in the 5-14 range. 

The ones I probably connected with the most (most of us did) were Helena & Lidya, sisters who were 11 and 13 at the time.  I even felt so drawn to the older kids I emailed CWA’s home office from Ethiopia that summer to see if they had any older waiting kids they were trying to place.  At the time they did have a few older kids, all boys and while I would have started in then, something just wasn’t right.  You’ll be happy to know that those boys have all been adopted though J.

Another thing I did when I returned home was join RainbowKids.org.  It has a photolisting of waiting kids.  At one point this led to a phone call to an agency about a waiting sibling set.  The phone conversation was one that gave both Jeff and I cause for pause.  But regardless of what I heard my heart was marked by that trip by those kids, especially by those girls.  I will talk more about RainbowKids later in another post (you had to see that one coming, right?).

Now as the trip last summer started to take shape I was in contact with one of the members of the board of directors, Brooke, of the Orphanage.   Upon first planning the visit to the Orphanage I believed that the kids at the Orphanage were unadoptable, but after my conversations with Brooke I found out that that it was possible that a child from the Orphanage could be adopted.   My heart soared at her words.  She made it clear it was not likely… just not completely impossible.

So I enlisted Jeff’s prayers and we both started praying that if there was a kid at the Orphanage that was supposed to be ours that God would make it abundantly clear.  However, I will also say that along with this we also prayed that if there wasn’t a child there that was supposed to be ours that too would be exceedingly clear.   To be honest that was my compromise J, you see I’ve had my heart set on adopting again, well, since we brought Eli home.  I really wanted there to be a child there, but  Jeff was really not sure if he did. 

The one thing I’d say we more or less agreed on, though, was that we wanted Abi to stay the oldest J (are you smiling?).   So, I showed up at the Orphanage on that Monday looking for a child younger than Abi, actually between Abi and Eli in age, that is to say 4 – 7 years old.  As my Dean Debbie so cleverly noted it would appear that God looked at my expression above and turned the – into a +.   You see, while I may have been looking for a 4 – 7 year old, when I arrived at the Orphanage, it was an 11 year old who met me.  An 11 year old who captured my heart.  An 11 year old that God clearly told me was my child. 

Nope, it was not what I had in mind.  It was, … So.  Much.  Better.  But then again, God’s plans always are, aren’t they?