Grieving, Praising, and Moving Forward in Faith

We had our appointment with the SDA today, the appointment we have been waiting for since September, the day when we would get a referral to meet our children.  We have read about it, imagined it, prayed about it, and talked about it many times.  We were moved into action by two little girls named Tatiana and Margarita - they stole our hearts and we thought of them as our daughters.   

Our prayers have always included that, if we were not meant to be their parents, that they would quickly find the loving home that God has planned for them.  That's the prayer that seems to have been answered.  The SDA did not have record of Tatiana and Margarita.  Either they were adopted by a Ukrainian family, or other guardians - perhaps family - were found for them.  So today we are grieving the loss of these two girls who we considered our daughters, but praising God that they are hopefully taken care of.  They will continue to be in our prayers for a long time to come. 

We have prayed many times for God to use us in the process, that he would continue to form us from miry clay for his purpose and glory (Psalm 40:2).  It is hard right now to be reformed after 7 months of preparing our hearts, home, and family for 2 specific girls.  But it's time for us to move forward and close this chapter and re-open our hearts to His reasons for bringing us here.  We owe that to the children we are about to meet.  Please pray with us that through His will, guidance, and care that this is possible, not just for us but for our entire family.  We are grieving - hard - today, and I can imagine that Sophia and Claire will be grieving in their own ways too, when they get this update. 

We spent an obsenely short amount of time at the SDA, considering our reason for being there.  We spend more time at the grocery store choosing which food to buy.  We were quickly presented with about 5 sibling groups, and then 3 individual girls, before we just ran out of time and we had to decide who we would go visit.  The kids were presented very fast with a description of their mental and physical conditian, age, gender, and any additional special notes if available.  We narrowed it down to 2 sibling groups, but how do you quickly choose which one to go visit?  We did so almost randomly, and we are trying hard to trust God that He knows what we are doing here, because today, we don't feel like we know what we are doing here. 

We chose a brother & sister in southern Ukraine, and were warned that the orphanage director is tough on foreigners.  A few hours later, Konstantin called us to say that he was stopping by our apartment to give us an update.  He told us that it was more complicated than just a "tough director" and that adoption of these two kids would be almost impossible.  Of the few children we learned about today, more than half of them had "complicated" circumstances that would make it difficult for us to adopt them.  Konstantin informed us that his families usually have better options to choose from, that our appointment was unusual.... Lucky us. 

So within hours of our SDA appointment, we were already moving on to Plan B.  (We were warned many times to be flexible, and they weren't kidding!)  We are instead going to visit a different brother/sister sibling group in Chernihiv, on Friday.

We move forward from here in faith that God will give us direction and continue to help us find the kids that he has already planned for our family.