Part II: How our referral came to be.

Let's just back up a little before our "almost call" on April 1st. For several months, we had been hearing rumors that there was a 4-5 little girl that they were just finishing up paperwork on. Since we had decided to turn down a referral back in September for a girl this age, we felt pretty certain that we would be turning down this referral for the same reasons.

As we had been feeling discouraged by this soon-to-be referral, we'd found ourselves saying on many occasion, "If only we knew they were getting the paperwork ready for a 2-3 yr old, then we might feel very differently right now." Since I hit the big 4-0, I realized that my baby urges dwindled away with my 30's; however, we still wanted to to adopt as young as possible (yet potty trained, thank you very much!) and felt that this age span would be the makings of some pretty sweet mojo between big brother and little sister.

So now let's jump forward again to April 1st. When our WACAP caseworker made that "almost call",  she told us it would just be a day or two until they had all of her (the 5 yr old) information to share with us.  A week went by, and on March 8th, the phone had still yet to ring. Not surprising at all. We'd lost count of how many times we had walked down this road of empty promises. Along the way, we've become fluent in the dialect of adoption - a few days really means a few months....a few years.

It was on March 8th that I decided that I was going to call WACAP to tell them we were really dropping out. That morning Husband had confessed that he was done with the adoption and just wanted it to stop. He could not go through this one more day. Predicting this might had been how it was going to play out, back on the April 1st, we had granted ourselves a 1 week extension. We were already feeling in our hearts that the figment of this little girl was not meant to come to our family, so why keep the torture going beyond then? Before the end of that work that day on the 8th, I was going to call. I was really going to do it.

I was sitting at my work computer when my phone rang from WACAP. I did not answer it. I couldn't deal with what that call was about at that moment, so I let voice mail pick up. I can still hardly believe that I continued to work and forgot that there was even a message! On my lunch break, I remembered and thought I better listen, and indeed the message indicated that this was "The call!". I then nonchalantly texted husband, which apparently he saw,  but also did not want to acknowledge that it existed. Fast forward through all of this nutty hesitation and I ended up in Husband's office at 4:30 .... almost 6 hours after "The call!".

If I were a fly on the wall, I think it would have been too sad to see what we looked like there at his desk, chairs facing each other, the phone in hand ready to call WACAP - or to not call WACAP. Surely we looked beaten down, depressed, discouraged, anxious, and angry. We felt that it had come to this.... after 6 years, we were going to be presented with a potential daughter and we were going to turn her away and then shut down our adoption dream. We weren't even going to listen to our caseworker's narrative, rather start the conversation as, "Hi WACAP. We are done. Send this girl's referral on to the next."

But instead, it went something like this....

W: Hi T and J. I know that this has been such a long and painful process for you, but I have information on a little girl and I feel that this might be the one for you! Do you want me to share a little about her before I email her information and photo?

Husband and I looked at each other and surprisingly said, "Sure".

W: "Well, we somehow ended up getting the information today for a little girl that just barely turned three years old......"

Needless to say, Husband and I looked at each other stunned as we continued to listen to the details of her story. We then agreed to get her info emailed to us and a few minutes later, we saw her photo for the first time. The photo of our daughter.

Heart. Be. Still.

 She was the cutest little thing you could even imagine! Her eyes looked bright and spunky. In one of her photos she was wearing a little Elmo shirt and cargo pants with sandals that looked several sizes too big.  From the little info that has been presented, she appears to have been well fed and has no apparent illnesses. She has only been living at the orphanage for 5 months and seems to have healthy attachments to people. This is big, big, big!

We read through her report, medical labs, and photos silently. All of my impulses were taunting me to jump up in song and dance, "There's our daughter! Woo-hoo! There she is!" But instead, I looked over toward Husband whose affect was still unwavering, but with maybe a little more seriousness and matter-of-fact. He leaned back in his chair and proceeded to confess his innermost fears that I had yet to hear. He feared what this could do to our family and even our marriage in the future. How life really would be for us from that day forward. He feared that we would have a long and painful road ahead.

Naturally assuming he was talking about our future with bringing this little girl home (that could potentially have challenging behaviors), I swallowed a huge tear and told him that we are 100% in this together, so if he truly felt this way, then we needed to call back and decline the referral.

"Huh?" he said quizzically. "What do you mean turn her down? I was talking about our future without her!" 

So there it is. We continued to look into a few more things that week regarding her medicals and hearing first hand accounts of people who had spent time with her there in Mekelle  - all glowing and promising! On April 14, we sent off our official acceptance documents and broke the news to J and family/friends.  Such a glorious day! We finally started to feel this huge weight on our shoulders begin to lift.