Here's the Story

More than three years ago our dossier was sent to China and given a log in date (LID) of March 29, 2006. The dossier, in which we requested a nonspecial needs girl age 3-7 years old, works its way through the system based on that LID. Eventually the dossier arrives in the Matching Room where it is matched to the paperwork of a specific child.

Although China changed the requirements for all dossiers logged in after May 1, 2007, our dossier was grandfathered in under the old requirements and the program has remained constant. Over the years, there have been changes made to the paperwork process for the special needs program, also known as waiting child program. There were times when we submitted paperwork for specific children in the waiting child program, but, happily, those children always went to the families that were intended to have them. Most recently the waiting child program included something called a multiple agency list. Those lists of waiting children are updated periodically, and profiles of those children are available to a number of adoption agencies at the same time. In order to be considered for a child on the waiting child list, we would have had to submit paperwork to our adoption agency for each special need diagnosis we felt we were capable of managing, including how the child's medical, educational, etc. needs would be handled. When a child is going to be placed on the multiple agency list, agencies can contact a family that has submitted paperwork for the specific special need diagnosis based on the family's LID and give the potential parents the opportunity to decide if they would like to have the child's file locked to review the information about that specific child. As the months went on and we crept slowly closer to getting our referral, we chose not to submit paperwork for the multiple agency waiting child program because we felt that we were close enough to getting a referral through the nonspecial needs program. We had grown comfortable in understanding the way the process worked, and we would follow the course we were on to being matched with our child.

Throughout our long wait, there have been many things we have learned. Most certainly we have learned that we are not in control. We have always put our trust in the fact that this would happen in God's time not ours. Well, His time came as a complete surprise.