The Details

Thank you for your kind words. Even thought it was difficult to say no, we both knew it wasn't what God had planned for us. This was especially evident by the peace we both felt last night. It's not easy to say no to a baby.

I got an e-mail from a woman (and it's a total friend of a friend of a great-aunt story so I'll name her L to spare you the whole drawn out story) named L saying she had been contacted about a little boy who was born on June 25th and didn't have a family yet. Oh, and he was still in the hospital. Were we interested.

My heart stopped half way through the e-mail and apparently I forgot to breath because my co-worker ( I got an assistant, did I tell you that?) B kept reminding me to. I also thought I was going to throw up for about 15 minutes too. Not having much information to go on I called Mr. Sparky and asked if he was interested. He said sure. So I got in touch with L and she gave me the woman's info who contacted her about it, her name is M.

So I called M and left a message (can I tell you how much leaving a message in a situation like this really truly sucks?) and immediately started calling our friends to start praying. M finally called me back and gave me a little more info. This little boy was born early, very early. His due date wasn't even until the end of this month or the beginning of next. His mom had also admitted to doing cocaine throughout the whole pregnancy. As she continued to tell me all the information, I began to realize that this probably wasn't our baby. Then the final kicker - he's bi-racial.

Now before everyone gets in a snit about that, let me explain. Although my husband and I are both white(extremely. we are so white it's not even funny) we would not have a problem adopting a child of a different race than us, if we lived in a more diverse area. If you've been reading for any amount of time you probably have heard me refer to our town as Podunk. And the reason I do this is because we live in a semi-rural area with about 150,000 people. And only five of them are black. Four of them are under the age of 14 and live on my block.

We do not live in a very diverse area. It still shocks me when I see a black person ( is that even the p.c. term anymore? I'm so behind the times) in our town. It just doesn't happen that often. Our neighbors down the street adopted two beautiful little children from Haiti. A boy and a girl, 11 and 7 at the time they came home. I have never in my life seen people so dark and I grew up in a major metropolitan city. From the moment they arrived they had so many issues. They had their daughter (11) in a Montessori school and that only lasted one month. She was teased so harshly by the other kids because of the color of her skin. And I know that says more about their parents than anything else, but if you don't grow up around something it can seem different and sometimes scary (not that this is any excuse, I found the whole situation sickening).

Based on our demographics and the fact that we would NOT be willing to relocate to a more diverse area, we have chosen a baby of the same race. There are too many issues to deal with in adoption let alone add the race card into the game, especially in a small town with "old school" mentalities still hanging around.

I know I don't need to defend our decisions, we have to do what's right for our family. But I have to tell you it was so hard to say NO to a baby. Mr. Sparky and I talked after I got more info from M and we decided to call the agency anyway, just to see if we could find anything else out. I left a message with the agency and turned around and called everyone I had just called to tell them it wasn't going to work out.

I went for a walk to clear my head and during that time kept praying for that little boy. What an unfair start this little boy will have in life. Once back from my walk I felt this enormous peace about the situation and knew that we had made the right decision. And it turns out that the decision would have been made for us anyway. This morning I got a phone call from the case worker handling his case. Apparently there was a development over the weekend that is going to prevent them from placing this little boy with anyone. She wouldn't give me any details, but I can't assume it is a good thing.

So it was an interesting look into the future and the possibilities that will arise. I can say though, I do not want to go through that again. It was only an hour from start to finish but felt like years. My heart is torn in many pieces - anger, confusion and sadness for this little boys mother and absolute anguish for this little boy who has had such an unfair start in life.

I know our baby will come. Because God is in control, we are just along for the ride.