Little boy in red and yellow.

August 29th gave us a challenge we have not yet had in this adoption journey.  A phone call from our agency asking if we would be interested in looking a photos of a 19 month old little boy in South Korea that is ready to be adopted.  He had some medical issues at 2 months and his agency was waiting to see if it caused any long term issues.  It hadn't, so now he is 19 months and ready to find his forever family.

August 30th was my Dad's biopsy that officially found his lung cancer and the start of a 4 day hospital stay.

We prayed about this little boy.  When the email with his photos came through, we took a deep breath and looked.  The first thing we did is smile and look at his big eyes and long black hair sitting in the floor in his red and yellow outfit.  We commented on how adorable he was and neither one of us wanted to say what was in our hearts, but later we found out it was the same thing...this is not meant to be our child...

"They" say you will just know when you see your child's face for the first time.  You will know that it is the child meant for your family.  I can tell you that over the next couple of days, I agonized over the decision to see this child's file.  We prayed about it and with Dad in the hospital recovering from the biopsy and a collapsed lung, I had a lot of time to seek God on this.  Naturally, fear set in.  In all forms.

I thought, "What if we do accept to look at this child's file, accept this as a referral, and start this process?  He  would be over 2 when we got to travel...our homestudy is only approved for up to 24 months...would they deny us once we got there for that?"  "What if we don't look at this child's file and no one else does either...what will happen to him?"  "What if this child IS meant for our family?  What if this is his last chance?  What if this is our last chance?"

This was not a decision we took lightly.  We tried to look at it from all angles, but even when we tried to talk about saying yes to even looking at the child's file, but we just did not feel peace about it.

Everyday since then, this little one has been on my heart..  His life right now, his future, his biological family.  Would you all please join with me in praying for the almost 20 month old little boy in the red and yellow outfit.

(I want to clarify that this was not an official referral.  We aren't even technically on the wait list because our file is on hold with our placement agency until Korea starts issuing referrals again this fall.)