Difficult week.....

This should be a post telling you our exciting news about our referral. We did get a referral this week. The call came on Monday just before 4:00 p.m. We celebrated for a couple days. We were thrilled to finally after all this time to have a referral. However, yesterday morning we received devastating news and it became clear that this child will not be joining our family after all.

This has been a great loss to our entire family. This is the worst loss we have ever experienced as a family. We are grieving. This is painful.

We had pictures of this sweet child. The girls each brought pictures to school to show their friends. Steve left for work one morning this week with his picture in his hands, like a proud father to a new son. We thought this was our son and brother. We began making plans for him. His picture still hangs on our refrigerator. We studied each part of his body from the top of his head down to his cute little feet.

I started to have visions of watching him go down the slide, taking a stroll around the neighborhood, running in the back yard, playing with the neighbor kids.

Then we got the news yesterday. We were not willing to give up at first. Maybe there was a mistake. We held out hope through a heart wrenching day utnil late last night when it became very clear.

We have been waiting for a very long time for this referral. I don't know why God put us through this experience. Why did we have to suffer so much? Why did my girls have to learn about this kind of loss and suffering?

Through this experience, I learned how weak I really am. I kept thinking about the verse when Jesus says, "when you love the least of these, you love me too." I was so confused.

Now, in the midst of grief and suffering, I'm starting to understand why. I am weak, that is true. But God strengthens us through our weakness. It's hard to see the joy in this experience but I know that God is using this experience to prepare us even more. God will reveal his perfect plan for our adoption, when the joy of all this will come. But for now, we are overwhelmed with sadness.