Back when Dan and I finally accepted the fact that were going to be parents of five, we both had the feeling that WE were supposed to be the ones to find our child. Ummm, ok.
So we asked ourselves:
How exactly were we going to go about that?
What were we even looking for in a child...boy/ girl and what special needs?
And how on Earth would we explain to our agency that we didn't want them, the professionals, looking for a child for us and that we, Dan and Danae, regular folks living in the suburbs would do that part of the process?
We prayed daily asking God to lead us to our child. And we started looking. I hate writing that down and I hate the way that sounds..."looking" for a child but it's exactly what we started doing.
I follow a waiting child advocating group that is very busy. I rarely review, much less read the messages, because there are just so many of them but one day as I was scrolling through the messages one of the subject lines caught my eye. The word was 'scoli'. I knew scoli was short for scoliosis and it's not a special need that I often see listed for waiting children. Our Bonich introduced us to scoliosis and has had not only one but two spinal fusions to correct her curve. We are all too familiar with scoliosis so when I saw the subject line I had to read more. The subject stated '4 year old girl, scoli'. The age thing was about the only thing we did know...a child older than Reagan but younger than Mason so basically 7-9 years old. I knew that this little gal was not the age we were looking for but I wanted to read more. When I inquired about her file I was told by the person who was advocating for her that she also had a file of an older girl with scoliosis if we were interested. As much as the sweet four year old tugged at my heart, Dan and I knew that Reagan needed to be the youngest in our family and so I inquired about the older girl that she had the file on.
Within minutes of sending an email requesting information on the older girl I got a reply. I opened it up and could see there were several photos attached. I just randomly clicked on one of them and this is what I saw:
Did your heart just skip a beat like mine did? I saw her and I knew. I knew she was the one, she was to be our fifth. I can't explain it, I just knew. I was more than a little nervous to show Dan because I knew his heart was going to melt and then it would be real....we would really be on this adoption journey once again and to be totally honest, it really freaked me out.
You already know how this part of the story ends. I did show Dan the picture and just as I expected, he said we found our number five.
Karin, the advocate for Noelle, has an advocating website for children with scoliosis:
http://www.journeytojunfen.com/web/do/site/photo?ID=703162
And that precious little four year old who led me to Noelle? She is still waiting....could she be yours?
