We've now been in Guangzhou for five days. Normally, we wouldn't have such an extended wait, but they are moving the U.S. Consulate General to a new location in the financial district of the city. We were able to get one of the first appointments when they open in the new office, but even then it isn't until Thursday morning at 8:30AM. We've met only three other families who are here adopting--they are lucky because they have appointments tomorrow.
When Jeff was here in 2007 you couldn't shake a stick in this part of Guangzhou without hitting an adoptive family. Things have really changed. There are still countless orphans, but the number of adoptions worldwide from China has decreased by 65 percent. It is so depressing to walk around Shamain Island and not see even one other adoptive family. Today we saw our first adoptive family on the street--they were adopting their second Chinese daughter. She was four and had a repaired cleft lip/palate. We recognized them from our medical appointment last Saturday. They brought their seven-year-old daughter (adopted six years ago) along with them. She was very protective of her new sister. She was screaming at the doctors while they were doing a blood draw. It is always nice to have a brief interaction with another family who understands what it took to get here--and the stress of the whole process.
So there's been several things that have happened over the past few days. We went for a medical exam last Saturday. It wasn't my finest hour of self control. We were shuttled down the hall with our guide Helen and walked directly into a doctor's office. The doctor opened our paperwork for five seconds and then stated, "you no get visa with this papers". I didn't even try to stay calm. It was all I could do not to start screaming obscenities. Long story short, after practically beating old Helen, bawling in the hallway, and taking a personal timeout it was explained that they needed further information about how Louisa was treated for her condition at the orphanage. They brought in the main doctor to explain that if they could get the correct paperwork then everything would be cleared for our consulate appointment. We also had a merciful moment because our adoption agency director, Heidi, just happened to be touring the medical facility that morning with us and she was able to make it clear that the guides needed to deal with the problem immediately. She helped them to understand that our family has some PTSD issues and just having her there helped me to calm down and quit crying. We had to wait through the weekend to get all of it cleared up but they tell me we are good to go--I'm not resting easy until Thursday afternoon. I'll be so glad to be done with this process. It is tough. I've never had such a test of faith--absolute faith in things that are completely out of your control.
The truth is that the hardest part is that one minute your praying, asking God to protect you and your kids and to please send angels and miracles...and the next minute your so mad at the people who are seemingly controlling your fate that all you can think about is telling them to eff themselves and throwing some chairs. You seriously start to feel like you are losing your mind. You start to question if you have any faith at all if you feel like hitting an old woman will make it better.
To act and not be acted upon.
These are the questions I cannot answer--I've learned much over the past 18 months--but I can kiss sainthood goodbye.
No comments:
Post a Comment