The Worst Possible Scenario

It is not often in life that the worst possible scenario comes true, but today it did. Yesterday after we officially declined the first referral because she was dying of Hepatitis C, we were excited to hear that they were going to give us another referral this morning. So with tenative excitement we geared up this morning to meet our new referral. The Ministry of Education lady smiled at us and was very friendly as we received the second referral. They did not tell us anything about her at that point except her name and birthdate. She was only slighty older than our first referral. That was fine with us, as we really just wanted a child that was not going to die or have severe life-long problems. We drove to the orphanage and they asked if we wanted to hear the medical report before meeting the child. We said yes and so the doctor came in and told us that she was severly paralyzed and that she had had heart surgery just last year. My heart just cracked right open at that moment. They brought her in and told us not to touch her as she had been sick. With every power of self-control I had I smiled at her and talked to her. She did not respond to us. As soon as they took her out I burst into tears. It was awful, and in fact I am crying right now as I sit here telling you all about it.

Our adoption agent felt horrible about all this, but there is really nothing he can do about it. I guess in the last two years while the agency has not been accreddited the government has provided more incentives for Russians to adopt these orphans. This has met with some success and quite a number of the young orphans have been adopted within the country. Because of this, the government no longer wants to send healthy orphans to foreign homes.

We are very angry as our contract stated that we wanted to adopt a 4 year old girl and that we would only accept minor, correctable issues. I understand that we are the first ones back to Russia for this agency and they did not know the government would be like this, but it doesn't stop the anger from forming in my stomach. I keep thinking about my beautiful girls and how excited they are to have a new sister. Emma asked me last night what color her hair is. I told her I would send her a picture tonight. I also keep thinking about all the children that are 3 and older that the Russians will never adopt--they always want very young children. Why will these people not see that we can offer one of these children a loving home environment where they can flourish and have so much opportunity before them? I do not understand how people can be so uncaring.

This afternoon we have to go to the notary to decline the referral and then we will see if they will give us another referral. When they gave us the second, they said that would be all, but we will see. We really just want to come home. We have pretty much given up hope that they will let us have a child without major problems. Some people seek to adopt children with special needs like this because they know they are prepared to take it on. Both the referrals we saw were sweet little girls that would be easy to love, but right now we don't feel we are prepared to handle this kind of challenge in our lives. Since we have traveled to the other side of the world for this, we will play their little game and see it through, but we are not looking forward to it.

Our American missionary friend was going to take us around this afternoon, but all of a sudden I have lost my drive to learn about all things Russian.