Steve had a radical shift of opinions about our family adopting when he visited Haiti for the first time. A part of his changing opinion was meeting the children in Haiti, and one little girl in particular. He came home from his first trip to Haiti and hoped that we would be able to adopt a certain little girl.
(A disclaimer for anyone who is familiar with Haitian adoptions…Steve was very careful not to communicate to this little dolly any of his thoughts that we would like to possibly consider adopting her. It wasn’t unusual for Americans to go down to an orphanage as a part of their adoption to select a child, and as a result, many of the kids asked you if you were looking for a child, or if you would be their father. Steve was way too early in his thought processes, and too unfamiliar with adoption policy, and lets face it, way too smart to be talking to a little kid about adopting them. In fact, he took less pictures of her that the rest of the kids because he didn’t want to show even the slightest bit of difference in interaction with her than the other kids.)
She is beautiful. It’s hard to know how old she is because body
size and development is very different in kids when there hasn’t been
consistent nutrition. But she had a
sweet little heart and sunny smiley face.
Steve had been home about three weeks, when I borrowed his
phone. He had this little girl's picture
as his screen saver. If you know Steve
you know that’s a big deal. We were
becoming smitten with her in particular. It was her face that was tied to our emotions and our hopes.
Within five phone calls and a little research on Canadian
adoptions we very quickly realised it was really unlikely that we would
be able to adopt this little girl. It
just doesn’t work that way in Canada and there is very little you can do to
work around it.
So now we had some
pretty big questions to work through.
Steve and I spent some time talking about it. We worked through asking if it had to be her or no one. Wondering if we should spend time and effort trying to circumvent the system. Wondering if we were specifically supposed to pursue her. Wondering if we should just quit the whole adoption idea before we really started. And we decided
that it didn’t need to be her. That there are many kids in Haiti who are waiting for a family.
It was
sad, I had rolled her name around in my head, pictured myself loving her, imagined her in our future family photos.
We moved forward with the adoption knowing that we would be
matched with whoever Mission of Tears proposed, and that it wouldn't be this little girl.
When we headed back in 2012 I was excited to see the little
girl that had God had used to soften Steve’s heart. I wasn’t sure how it would feel to spend time
with her, but I was looking forward to being there. I was surprised that she wasn’t there. She had moved home with a family member.
So dear sweet little one, I continue to pray for you. That the Lord will bless and keep you. That you will be loved and safe. It seems that you won’t be my daughter, but
you will always have a piece of my heart.
And now we are waiting to be matched with our children in Haiti. Our file has been submitted to a creche and soon they will send us pictures and bio's of the children who might be our children. New faces to love.
