What led us to Maria...

Following is the story of our current adoption journey:
(It's LONG!)

For years Kevin has felt that with our next adoption we would choose the child, instead of the child being chosen for us.  He just had this sense that we would read about a child and just know that he or she would be for us.

After years of discussion and going back and forth about domestic versus international adoption, and if it was international then which country, we decided to research all of the Latin American countries that have international adoption programs.  We felt that since Guatemala is closed (which is where Carlos was born), another Latin American country would have some shared heritage, specifically the Spanish language.  Our children would both have limited information about their birth parents, so they would have that in common as well.  We narrowed our search down to Peru, Ecuador, or Colombia.  We didn't feel drawn to any one of these countries over another, but felt that the Ecuador program would be a good fit for our family.

What led us to Maria...

We started our home study in March.  I (Stephanie) had been looking for months and continued to look at our agency's waiting international children's list, as well as the list on the RainbowKids website, every few weeks.  We were looking for a child who was from a Latin American country, who was younger than our son, who did not have siblings, and who was relatively healthy.  I found no little one that matched that description.  Our case worker needed to put into our home study where we were going to be adopting from, so we felt that if we didn't find a little one on a waiting children's list by the time our home study was finished, we would choose the traditional adoption program in Ecuador (which is a two year process for a healthy infant/toddler.)  Just a couple of weeks before our home study was to be completed, I received an email notification from RainbowKids about a little one that matched our description who was just added.  I clicked on the link, and there was a brief description of a little girl from Colombia who would be two in October.  The agency that was working on placing her was CHSFS.  That's the agency we had already decided that we wanted to be our placing agency!  It said that she was diagnosed with corpus callosum.  I didn’t know what that was, so I googled it and discovered that it is the middle section of the brain that connects the left and right hemispheres.  Diagnosed with corpus callosum?  How can you be diagnosed with a body part?  That’s like saying I was diagnosed with an ear.  It didn’t make sense, so I contacted our agency to request more information about her. 

Four weeks later we received two photographs and her medical and psychological evaluations.  The first thing we read said that she was diagnosed with corpus callosum agenesis.  We had no idea what that was, so I googled that as well.  What we read really scared us.  It’s the partial or complete absence of the corpus callosum.  She’s missing part of her brain?!  That’s terrible, and sad.  We read more about it, and it scared me even more.  This is way more than we can handle, I thought to myself.  Oh my goodness.  We decided that we’d wait to read more until after our son was in bed.  So that night we sat on the couch and read through her files over and over.  It turned out that her story was not as scary as what we had read about the diagnosis online.  So we sat there.  And we looked at her pictures again.  And we looked at each other and at the bright computer screen.  What do we do with this?  This is a life, a real little person, and we are strangers from another country sitting here with her private medical files, reading through them.  Dear Lord, what do we do?  We prayed together and talked some more, and decided that we’d at least pursue the next step, which would be to have her medical files evaluated by a specialist here in the States.  So we went upstairs and got ready for bed.  As I climbed into bed, I reached for my Bible.  I opened it up to the page in Luke where I had left off the night before.  My eyes quickly scanned the page and they stopped on a verse.  I read it to see if this is where I had left off.  It was Jesus talking to his disciples and he said, “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name, welcomes me; and the one who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”  My voice caught in my throat.  I read it again.  “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name, welcomes me.”  Welcoming this little child will welcome You?  Of course I want to welcome you, Lord.  Oh my goodness!  I turned to Kevin and read to him what I just read.  We both just looked at each other wide eyed.  Wow….O.K….Wow.  My body felt hyper-alert.  We continued to talk with each other, prayed together for continued guidance, and then eventually fell asleep. 

The next morning I researched a half a dozen pediatric specialists who have experience in evaluating foreign medical files.  I finally found one that felt just right.  I sent our information off to this foundation in Minnesota (which, as a side note, is the state where our agency, CHSFS, is located.)  We received the evaluation back in three days.

Eagerly we tore open the envelope, and greedily we read every word.  Twice.  “Her milestones so far are delayed but still within an O.K. range. However at this age, milestones are primarily motor in nature and do not predict cognitive potential unless they are severely delayed which hers are not.  The additional testing they did was encouraging but tell us mainly about her motor and social milestones which may not show evidence of higher cortical functioning at this point in her life.”  “In summary, she is a cute girl but currently I would say that she is at moderate to high risk for ongoing special needs for learning and development. Her brain abnormalities and history make her at about 85% or more likely to have some impairment. Kids can be very resilient and have surprised us before with their amazing spirits but she will need a family that is prepared for the high likelihood of special needs.”

We sat on the couch again that night, after our son was asleep, and discussed what the evaluation said.  Can we do this?  This is huge.  With what I read in the Bible nights ago though, how can we not do this?  So are we saying yes?  Yes, to making her our daughter?  Well, what would make us say no?  We sat there in silence for a few moments and I couldn’t think of any reason good enough to say no to her.  Nothing.  Which is amazing because her diagnosis is way more severe than we would have ever chosen or sought out.   Kevin’s only hesitation was if her life expectancy was shorter, then maybe we would say no.  But then we talked about it and realized that even that wouldn’t cause us to say no, but rather to seek God more diligently to make sure this is what He was asking us to do, to bring this special little girl into our family.  But then we went back to that verse, and we couldn’t get past it.  It felt like we would be distrusting God if we said no.  So we looked at each other, and said yes.  And then felt tremendous peace.  Unexplainable peace.

And since our decision to say yes, there have been many confirmations that we are on the right path:

A day or two after we told our agency that we wanted to adopt Maria, Kevin suggested that I look up the orphanage online and see if they have a website.  I found it right away and even though it was in Spanish, I was able to navigate a bit around the site and found where there are photographs.  I clicked through the photos and on about the twentieth one, I stopped.  The face I was looking at looked very familiar.  Could it be?  That’s Kristi!  With a baby.  The photo looked about six to eight years old or so, so that must be baby Isabel!  Kristi is the mom of two sweet children from Colombia, the only family we’ve ever met who’ve adopted from Colombia.  And we just met them two months prior at the international heritage camp that I was helping to run.  Kristi volunteered on the last day of camp to help me organize all the materials to put back in storage.  We hit it off right away. We talked all about our families, our kids, adoption.  Looking at the photo on my screen, I grabbed the phone and dialed her number.  “Kristi!  Did you adopt from Los Pisingos?”  “Yes…but why do you ask?”  “Because I’m staring at your picture on their website right now!”  “What?  Why are you on their website?!”  Her voice got higher and more excited.  “Well….”  And I launched into our story of pursuing Maria’s adoption.  Such a beautiful, exciting conversation followed!  Here is a family who is using a completely different agency, in a different state no less, and is the only family we’ve ever met who’ve adopted from Colombia, and now we’re adopting from the same orphanage that they adopted their children from?  Amazing!  A few weeks after our phone conversation, I received an email that they just accepted the referral of two little sisters from Los Pisingos!  Our three future daughters know each other and are together right now!  What a blessing!

One day as I was sitting at my desk, a thought crossed my mind that made me sit up straight.  If in that brief description of Maria that I had read on RainbowKids weeks ago it had contained her accurate diagnosis, if that typo wasn’t there that left off the word “agenesis,” I would never have requested more information about her from our agency.  I would have googled the diagnosis and that would have been it.  Missing part of the brain?  That’s too much.  Keep looking.  God knew that about me!  God doesn’t make mistakes, and we believe that the diagnosis was left off so that His plans would be fulfilled!

Maria’s given name is Maria Jose.  We knew we wanted to keep her given name and add a second middle name, like we did with our son.  But Jose?  Isn’t that a boy’s name?  So we thought about adding an “i” to Jose and making it “Josie.”  Maria Josie Jane.  Cute.  We liked it, but yet there was something that just wasn’t quite right about it.  We thought about it for a few weeks, and then once we were approved by the orphanage to proceed with her adoption, we wanted to make a final decision before we started telling our friends and family about her.  After a night and a day, we still couldn’t decide, so we told our parents any way.  When I was talking to my dad, he said that Jose is the same as Joseph and suggested we change it to Josephine.  He told me that his sister's middle name is Josephine.  I never knew that, and as soon as he said it my mind jumped to my Aunt Mary Jo, my mom's sister.  I asked my dad if there was any chance that the “Jo” in Mary Jo was short for Josephine.  He didn't know, so he asked my mom, and...it is!  How amazing is that?!  And so beautiful to be able to incorporate both of my parents' families with that name. And J..o..s..e, “Jose,” are the first four letters in the name "Josephine." We love it!

So this is the journey that we are now on.  A journey that we would never have imagined for ourselves looking ahead at our lives years ago.  There will be times of struggle, we know that, yet also so much joy, and we know that God will give us everything we need to be the parents of Maria that He wants us to be.