Ten years ago today...

Ten years ago today we sat down at a desk in the Ukrainian adoption center anxiously waiting to be shown a picture of our soon to be adopted child.  Two hours later we left wondering what in the world had just happened.  In order to avoid the whole "Eeeny-Meeny-Miney-Moe" method of choosing from scores of orphans who were available for adoption, we asked God to choose for us, leaving no room for us to make a mistake.  The only two conditions we had previously decided upon were 1.We would not interrupt the birth order of our other child, Tommy, who was four years old at the time, and 2.We would not adopt a child with medical needs greater than what we felt we could handle. 

Immediately after sharing these two conditions with the older gentleman behind the desk, he showed us two pictures of  healthy boys, both five years old.  We thought he must have misunderstood, but when our facilitator, Sveta, explained again that we wanted to stay under the age of four, he shook his head, said something in Ukrainian, and pointed to a book shelf full of binders behind us.  We were so confused. This wasn't going how we expected.  Out of hundreds of thousands of orphans in the country, we were being told there were only 2 healthy children available for adoption that day, and they were both older than Tommy. 

The red binders behind us were full of information sheets on children with medical needs.  Following our facilitator's lead, we began to look through the binders at pictures of hundreds of children who had some pretty serious medical concerns.  We couldn't read any of the information written in Ukrainian, we only saw their faces. We were relying on Sveta to show us the children who had conditions that weren't so serious, all the while, we were praying that the psychologist would cave and show us the files of healthier children. Certainly, I thought, God knew we couldn't handle a child with such serious issues.  The quiet man sat for nearly two hours fiddling with papers on his desk while we watched Sveta nervously thumb through one binder after another, searching for a child who wasn't so sick.  She inquired about a few whom he would call to check on before hanging up and giving us a reason we should or could not consider each one.

Just after he took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes one final time, Sveta said, "I think we should visit this one."  We looked at a page full of Ukrainian words with a tiny picture stapled to the top. We could barely see the face of the infant wrapped in a blanket. His name was Victor. He was 2 and a half years old and according to Sveta, the medical conditions listed were often over diagnosed.  The psychologist called to inquire, then he hung up and gave us a nod and a slight grin.  Within minutes, we were back in the taxi wondering how the magical moment of discovering whom God had chosen to be our child turned out to feel more like a process of elimination.  

Before leaving us at the apartment, Sveta handed me a slip of paper describing the child's medical conditions.  Rather than fretting over the "what ifs", I tucked the list in my pocket and practiced saying his name in my head, "Victor". We soon would find out how God, from this moment, was  opening our hearts to one of the most precious children we would ever meet, Victor Vitalyvich Sova.