The referral

It was Friday, December 27 when we got the call about our son, but really, our journey to Asher started 3 weeks earlier.  We are choosing to write about both of our referral experiences, simply because we want to share our entire adoption journey that we have been on and pray that God will use our story to encourage others that may find themselves in the same position some day. 
It was Thursday, December 5th.  The kids and I just walked in the door at about 5:30 and I saw a strange number on our phone....I honestly expected it to be someone wanting the local hospital (our home # is one digit different than the hospital phone #~leads to some interesting wrong number calls!).  :)  Anyway, I answered the phone and was surprised to hear the person on the other end say my name.  As soon as she said "Denise?" I knew it was Nikki, our social worker.  I thought to myself "why in the world is she calling me when she just emailed me yesterday?"  (As a side note~she truly DID email me on Wednesday to check in on us and my exact words were "we're great, but we'd really love to know who our Toddler is before Christmas!")  Back to the phone call~Nikki started our conversation by saying "well, it's before Christmas" and right away I KNEW why she was calling!  My first thought?  "Oh my word I'm not ready!"  Crazy, right!?!?! We've been waiting for this phone call and I'm sitting there thinking we're not ready!?!? :)  Anyway, I might have let out a few happy sounds and ran to our room so the kids wouldn't hear our conversation, even though they already knew what was going on because of my happy screams!  :)  She proceeds to tell me that she is calling about a little boy, 17 months old, with a pretty severe case of a special need we had marked on our medical conditions checklist.  We finished up our phone call and she emailed me this little boys file.  Wade was out working at the farm, so I had to wait until he got home to check the email.  The kids and I had a GREAT conversation at supper~I truly believe this was all part of God's plan.  My plan was to not let the kids know we had gotten a referral until we had officially said yes....obviously that plan flew out the window when I got all excited on the phone!  Owen wanted to know if this baby would be in my tummy, which led to us talking about how this baby had a Mommy that couldn't take care of him (I hadn't told the kids that our referral was a boy) and that this Mommy was probably  sad, and our Toddler would be sad sometimes because he might miss China and his birth Mommy, and we might be sad at times too....of course by the end of supper all 5 of us were crying at one point.  Again, truly not how I had everything planned out, but such a great night of talking through things that we hadn't talked about in awhile.  So, Wade gets home, the kids are in bed, and we open the email to see this little boy.  He was beautiful from what we could tell, there were only 2 pictures of him and they were not great quality at all.  The file was quite old as far as China medical updates go, and we could tell his condition was probably more than we were ready for, but we decided to have our International Adoption physician review the file and while we were waiting we would pray to see what God wanted us to do. 
Our physician called me back the next day, right when I was ready to walk out the door to go to the Michael W. Smith concert with my Mom and Sister.  I took the phone call expecting it to be about 10 minutes long and ended up being on the phone with him for over 45 minutes~did I mention we have LOVED working with this Dr!?!  Anyway, he was very honest and said that this little boys' condition was definitely not a minor need, and would require about 10-15 surgeries over the next 17 or so years.  So, I took that info and headed out the door to the concert and ended up crying on the way to Sioux Falls while I told my Mom and Deb about it.  Again, so not how I had this all planned out in my head!  :)  The opener for Michael W. Smith was Third Day (who I love) and when they sang the song "Children of God" I knew in my heart that we had to say no to this little boy.  I had texted Wade and told him to read my scribbled notes I took while talking to the Dr. and we would talk about it when I got home.  I got home and we talked, and we both had the same conclusion...this little boy was not ours.  I can not begin to tell you the guilt that I felt that entire next day.  I couldn't think about him without crying.  I felt like such a hypocrite....we tell God we will follow his leading in this whole adoption process, and then we get a referral and we say no?  It just did not seem right, but yet Wade & I knew that this little boy was not ours.  Our social worker assured us that we were NOT the only people to decline a referral and so that Monday we were back to waiting for a phone call.  We also told the kids that we had said no, and of course Elliot started to cry~that night at bedtime he prayed "Dear God, please let that little boy not be sad that we said no."  Talk about breaking my heart.  I did explain to him that thankfully these kids never know people are looking at their file until the family has said yes.  We still pray most nights for all the Mommies that have to leave their babies, and for the kids that are waiting....all things that I think our kids weren't really aware of up until now, even though we had talked about it way earlier this year.  
Fast forward to Dec. 24th....such a hard night!  I had seen so many updates on the Adoption facebook group that I am part of, of people who had been matched the week of Christmas, and was just feeling sad.  I looked at our 5 stockings hanging there and just wanted so badly to know who our Toddler was, and I really just wanted to know that someone would give our Toddler a hug that night.  I just did not want him/her to be alone on Christmas Eve.  Friday night we had a Christmas party in Edgerton and I left my phone out in the truck.  After the party we got in the truck to go home and I saw on my phone I had a missed call from Nikki!  I was texting her to say I'll call in 10 minutes when I'm not by the kids (we had to stop at Wade's parents house on the way home), when she actually called me again and said "I know it's 2 days after Christmas, but I'm still pretty close!"  :)  Let's just say the ride home from Edgerton was the LONGEST I have ever experienced......I just wanted to check my email!  :)  This time I was much more controlled in my excitement so the kids had no idea who I was on the phone with.  We got home, checked our email and saw pictures of the cutest little boy.  We read his medical report and it was fabulous (as much as it can be when obviously it's limited) and then when we made his pictures even bigger I think Wade & I both knew that he was ours.  We still had the Dr. review his file, which this time took 5 days for the Dr. to get back to us~AGH!!!!  THAT was a long wait!  We heard back from the Dr. on Thursday, January 2nd (thankfully on his lunch break) and I sent in our LOI (letter of Intent to adopt) to our Agency that afternoon!  We were SO EXCITED!!!!!!
That night we told the kids they had one last Christmas present to open~a box full of blue balloons with a picture album full of pictures of their new BROTHER!   We had put a note in the front of the album that said this:
Hi Kayda, Elliot, Chloe, and Owen!  I am your new brother, Asher Lee.  I am one year old and was born on July 10th, 2012.  I like to play outside and play with new toys.  I can't wait to come home to meet you!  Love, Asher.  Kayda of course was the one reading the note and while she was reading her voice kept getting higher and higher and louder and louder and faster and faster until no one could really understand her.  SO CUTE!!!!  Then we went out for supper to Pizza Ranch (tried to talk the kids into Chinese and they said "no way!" we'll work on that!) and told them they couldn't tell anyone.  So, we're sitting at the table and Chloe looks over at me before she starts eating and says "Mom, do you know who I prayed about?" then she leans over and whispers "ASHER!"  :)  Also while we were eating Elliot stops eating, looks at me and says, "What's his name again?  Prancer?"  The kids thought that one was hilarious!  :)  After supper we stopped at my sister's house to tell her and show her the photo album, then we went to my Mom's and gave her the gift bag with Asher's photo album in it!  When we got home we emailed Asher's pictures to Wade's Mom and Dad, then called them and told them to check their email while we were on the phone with them so that we could hear their reaction.  So exciting!!!!
So, that is our story of how God brought Asher to our family.  Like I said, most of it was not at all how I had it planned out, but we truly believe that God had this planned out the whole time and it could not have been any better.  We are so excited and are praying that Asher will stay safe while he is waiting for us to come get him, and that our paperwork on this end will move swiftly so that we can bring him home before his 2nd birthday!  Oh, and one more thing~remember how I said that on Christmas Eve I just wanted to know that our Toddler would get a hug and not be alone?  Well, Asher is living with a foster family and, from what we can tell, being very well taken care of.......Merry Christmas to me!  Thank you Lord for your indescribable gifts that come at just the right time.