Was God calling us to Special Needs?

During these years of waiting, we saw other families adopting from China opt for special needs children instead of staying in line for a "healthy" child. I put quotes around healthy because noone truly knows the health of their child until you have them in your arms and are back home having all the medical tests ran. There are no guarantees on even the healthy children, nor is there a family medical history for these abandoned children. Our original dossier requested a healthy infant girl preferably as young as possible. Most of these babies are reaching their first birthday around the time of their adoption.

As our wait continued, we prayerfully sought the heart of God and decided to be open to special needs. We could stay in line for a "healthy" child and still be in the Waiting Child program for children with special needs. Children with special needs were typically older. We were given a list to select the special needs that we were open to considering. This was an uncomfortable process which made us feel like we were playing God. We felt like we could only handle minor special needs so we made our selections, submitted new paperwork, and waited again. This was around April 2009. The rest is history as we received our referral for Riley Grace on 1/28/10! She was 18 months old at the time. Her special need was her cleft lip; this is only cosmetic and easily repaired when she arrives home! Thank you Jesus for answered prayer!