One Year Ago Today!

A year ago today we received the referral of our darling girl, Karleigh Mei. The month prior to this I was just on the edge of my seat waiting and hoping that our referral would come. The new "Shared Referrals" had taken a turn and LOTS of people were receiving referrals. In fact, two of my friends, one with the same LID as me and the other a week after me, had both already received their referrals. I was becoming so anxious. I would look over the special needs list (with our agency, we filled out a list of special needs we would consider, and then they would match you with a child) wondering if there were any other needs I had overlooked. I did add some things during our wait (we waited 7 months from the time our dossier was sent to China to the time we got the referral), but the part I felt THE MOST uneasy about was the age maximum we would consider. I think I changed it twice--bumping it up.  Here is the last email that I wrote on May 20, 2008:

Lauren...

I believe that this will be the last time that I update our Special
Needs application.  :o)

I had you update the age we would accept  about 2 months ago...and I
thought I would be more specific if I could.  I said that we would
accept a girl 0-30 months of age.  I put 30 months as the oldest, only
considering the time it would take to wait for her...thinking it might
be as long as 6 months....thus putting her at 3 yrs. of age when we go
to get her.  If there is a child that is on the list, and has a need
that we have specified on our application that we would accept and she
is between the age of 0-36 months, please prayerfully consider us even
if she might be older than 30 months.  Ever since I stated the age
limit to 30 months it has really burdened my heart!!  I know that you
pray over each of the children before you try and "match" and this
gives me such peace.  So thank you in advance!  :o)

I hope that I have not thoroughly confused you!!  :o)

Blessings and have a great week!!

Jennifer 

I finally felt peace about it all and wasn't going to mess with our application anymore. :)

So I finally was beginning to see a bit of a pattern at when the new Shared Referral lists were coming out, so I had a hunch as to when the July one would be coming out. The week that looked most probable was the same week that I had planned on being out of town taking care of my sister's twin 2 year old boys. I called my family coordinator to let her know where I was going to be and make sure she had my cell phone # for just in case! I also made sure that I had given Karl directions as to where everything was and what to do!

The morning of July 10th--this is how my day was starting! With these two guys! Lex and I had even joked that we would be having Pei Wei* that night for dinner to celebrate a referral! Little did we know we were right! These guys are HUGE Pei Wei* fans and I'm sure they were celebrating the fact they'd have that for dinner!

It was later that day that I received an email stating that a new Shared Referral list had come out. Actually, Lexie saw it first and told me! :) I tried not to think about it (yea right!) and continued on with my day---of course, making sure that I had my cell phone with me at ALL times!

Just a little bit after 3:00 pm, we had just settled down to watch *What About Bob? as the boys were napping. Lex and I were both on the bed and my cell phone rang! We both stared at my phone and saw the # scroll across. I think we both screamed!!! I jumped up and answered it. Of course we all know now it was my family coordinator telling me that they had a little girl they thought we might be interested in. I had mentally played this call in my head a zillion times at least.....and what she was saying was not what I had played in my head. For some reason, I thought we'd be matched with a cleft lip/palate child or a child with clubbed feet, or a child with hip dysplasia. And when she said that this little girl was blind in one eye...I just totally went blank. And then she told me her age. She was 32 months old. All I could think was, she's so old! Wow...how quickly I forget!! I had finally felt at peace about the age maximum! Sheesh!! I truly believe that the Lord kept nudging me to "up" the maximum age. I am SOOOO glad I listened to the Spirit's leading! Her special need though sounded so.....minimal. I said that I'd like to review her file and Lauren said she'd be sending her file via email. It was a Thursday afternoon, and our agency's time was an hour ahead of us, making it 4:00---we had an hour to review her file before we got back with our agency with a game plan.

As I'm running to the computer, I'm trying to get ahold of Karl. I felt like time was just flying by and I had no time!! When I opened up the email from Lauren and finally the picture of this darling, darling girl....my heart just melted for her! Oh my goodness....I couldn't take my eyes off of her! She was just so beautiful!!! And her lips!? The cutest lips I had EVER seen! I did look at her picture before Karl did. He finally called me back and he asked what I thought about her...and all I could say was, "She's sooooo cute!".

These are the pictures that had captured my heart!

We called Lauren back and said "YES! We want her"!! The plan was that Lauren would lock her file and we had to have our Letter of Intent written and ready by the following afternoon. We had less than 24 hrs to get it all done because it was a Friday. That night I went to bed feeling so many different emotions. One minute I was beyond thrilled...and the next I was so afraid! I had taken a picture of Karleigh Mei on my cell phone and I woke countless times that night looking at her picture. Her picture just made me smile!

What we didn't know at the time, was that this same day, some pictures were being taken of our girl. Her best friend was being adopted and her parents were using Ladybugs and Love service. One of the questions they had asked, was did their daughter have a best friend. And so they had taken a picture of Karleigh Mei as well this day. I love how the Lord loves to delight us in these little things. We did not realize this until a couple of months later when we ALSO used Ladybugs and Love and they connected the pieces together that our girls were best friends. They put us in contact with this family. They live in Chicago and some day we'd love to get the girls together again.

Here is a picture of our girl taken on July 10, 2008!

I must add that I was so afraid of the HUGE decision we had made...worrying wether we had made the right decision or not. But God had revealed in MANY ways that indeed, He was leading us. To find out about the following picture, go to this post to read more about how He came through ----> HERE.