Hopeful hearts Waiting Arms

So many things have happened this summer, and I haven't been in a place to blog. This summer was filled with much loss and a lot of gain. Emotionally the experiences I had were very valuable to prepare me for what awaits me with our adoption. I am not with out heartache and scars but I also know I have gained wisdom and a greater knowledge of what needed "fixed" in me. Our referral for our little girl came quite fast. I knew our dossier was logged in and that we could possibly be matched off the shared list which came out on Monday, August 29th. BUT there was one problem...hurricane Irene was getting ready to hit the east coast, possibly shut down power and our agency would not be able to match us. I knew I had no control over such things and knew in my heart God was in control. The hurricane did not knock out power for our agency. I received an email around 9pm Monday night. I had been checking my phone to see if I had an email. My heart started beating wildly when I saw I had an email with two referrals to consider. I jumped up and fired up the internet on our computer. I opened my email message. In the email was two attachments. One titled Family1 one titled Family2. I opened Family 2 first. I am normally a very methodical person, so opening something numbered "2" before I opened something numbered "1" is NOT normal for me. When I opened the second referral there she was! This beautiful little smiling face with rosy red cheeks. She was beautiful! I was excited, disoriented and puzzled. We are in the special needs program and had been preparing all along for a cleft palate/lip baby girl referral. Her special need was so minor and does not require surgeries and more than likely nothing but a loving home. But that meant we had to "reject" the other little girl. I cannot tell you how heart breaking that was! I never knew I might have a choice. I know God directed me to open the second referral first and that we could never adopt two at once but it still was painful. I will never forget HER face and ask everyone who reads this to pray for a little girl in China. (God will know who she is) It was an emotional night! We were SO excited, but we really didn't know what came next. I called the agency the next day and was assured her file was locked to us and we should have our pediatrician look at her file. Our pediatrican, who has an internationally adopted child herself lthought her medical file looked great and she was "quite lovely". We called our agency to let them know we wanted to proceed. On August 31st our agency sent our Letter of Intent and we received provisional approval (PA) that China would be proceeding with the adoption process with us on September 6th! We are now waiting for the very important Letter of Approval (LOA) from China which tells us officially she is ours. That time line is about 30-? days. I have estimated based on other families currently in process we should have approval around mid-October. We can't wait!