Oh That Face

I can hardly believe that it was one year ago that I saw my daughters face for the first time!

We had been waiting and praying for our referral for 5 years. At times we felt like it would never come, yet we waited. We were told we were crazy to keep waiting, yet we waited. The wait grew longer and longer, yet we waited.

We believed with all our hearts that our daughter was in China. No matter how painful the waiting became how could be do anything else but wait. We wanted our daughter. God had been so clear with us that His plan for our family was adoption and that our child was in China. So we waited.

I remember last September so well. For the last few months referrals had been coming about the 2nd week of the month, yet as the days ticked by there wasn't even a whisper that they were coming. We check the Rumor Queen website daily looking for a hint of when the referrals might come and whether our date was in or not, but there was nothing. As the 3rd week crawled past we thought for sure China was going to skip September all together (they had done it before). Then Suddenly there was a rumor that referrals were being sent out and that WE WERE IN THE BATCH!

It seemed like eternity between when Rumor Queen said that the referrals hit the US adoption agencies and when we finally got the call.

My phone suddenly stopped working, I knew it was our adoption coordinator calling but it wouldn't answer. I MISSED THE CALL! I called her back as soon as my stupid phone worked (it was seconds but it might as well have been an hour). Her line was busy (she was calling someone else with their good news). Finally she called me back. BJ was on his way to a going away party for a friend at work. We tried to conference him in but he was on the subway and we lost him a few times. Finally after what felt like an eternal comedy of errors, BJ and I listened carefully as Leah told us about our daughter. Our precious 7 month, 12 lb, 23 inch little girls. She was a real person! A living, breathing being, who was our daughter! It was suddenly so real.

I was so excited, and so in love with the precious little face that showed up in my email a few moments after we hung up with Leah. Sophie was perfect, she even had an expression on her face that I had seen a million times before...on my husbands face. We knew she was ours and though we loved her even before we saw her, we loved her that much more because she was finally real.

I'm willing to admit that even after 5 years of waiting for her (and 8 years before that trying to have a family) I still felt unprepared! I've never been one to think that parenting is easy. I have seen people who I think have done a great job and those who have set the example of what I don't want to do but I've yet to see any parent make it look easy. Parenting is a huge responsibility! We were looking at the face of our daughter...who we were responsible to raise into a decent young woman!

Thankfully the panic only lasted a moment (though it returns even still from time to time), we had a million phone calls to make! Parents, siblings, friends. We had moved 3 times during the wait (hubby's Air Force) so we had friends all over the country that had been waiting with us, and needed to be able to celebrate with us. My sister in-law and nephew were visiting us that week, so they got to be the 1st to see her. It was a flurry of excitement, by the time BJ and I had a moment of quiet to sit together and contemplate our new daughter all we could do was laugh and cry.

Today Sophie and I had a little date for lunch, skyped with daddy, and went to dinner at my brothers. Sophie had ice cream cake for desert to celebrate the 1st of our anniversaries. It was cool to spend some time with my sister in-law and nephew who were with us a year ago. Its amazing how different a year makes. I wish more than anything that daddy were here with us to celebrate, but thankfully we have a whole lifetime ahead of us.

Here's to 1 year looking at that precious face.