What's New with the Sterling's journey to add to our family....
I cannot believe it has been over a year since I posted on our blog. A lot has happened over the past year. Almost exactly a year to the day of withdrawing our request for the little girl named Emma, we received our Letter of Approval for another little girl.
Matt and I went back and forth on her name and landed on Vivyan Jene. She turned 2 on March 22, 2012 and her need is club feet.
I will be posting a timeline of each steup up until now as soon as I can figure out how to find my way around on this blog thing! What I can say right now that we will be traveling to China in July or August to pick up our little girl! The boys are going with us which is going to make the trip so much more wonderful!
Here is a picture of her!
Our journey took a turn on Tuesday, April 27th when we had a doctor review the medical information on Emma and a more serious condition was discovered. We feel God revealed this to us and we are thankful He did.
We had just discussed with our social worker the day before (at our final home study appointment) what special needs we felt we could handle as a family. Emma has a special need that we are not equipped to handle. My heart broke as I listened to the doctor explain what Emma's condition is.
We withdrew our intent to adopt this little girl, knowing and trusting that God will provide a family that can care for her.
This is not the end of our journey. We are confident that the Lord has called us to adopt a little girl from China and we wholeheartedly trust that He will provide the exact right girl for our family.
Please continue to pray for us as we walk through this. We serve a great God!!!!
A Little History
In 2001, after realizing that we were not able to have any more biological children, the thought of adoption entered my mind. Matt had no idea! Little did I know that about a year later, we would be introduced to a little girl that was brought home from China by a family in our church. December 2002, my heart broke as I sat in the pew at church. A little girl from China? Hmmm...how could this be? God was stirring in my heart something more amazing than I could even imagine. I cannot remember if I even told Matt at the time but at some point I mentioned it to him. Being the "man of few words" he is, did not really have anything to say about it. At the time, we were busy, busy, busy with two little boys so this burden I had was placed on the back burner but never left my thoughts completely.
Fast forward to January 2007...I was a leader in the youth group at our church and Summer Mission trips were presented to us as opportunities to serve God in other countries – one of them.....China. I knew immediately that I was supposed to go to China. A little side note – I never had the desire to leave the US at all but I knew this was what God wanted me to do so I told Matt. You can only imagine his response.....China? The smile on his face said it all. He knew if I went to China, the burden I had to adopt would only grow deeper! With his full support, I signed up to go to China in June of 2007 to work with special needs children. This trip truly changed my life! The day before I was scheduled to come home from China, a little girl with a heart condition was brought to the place we were serving and I, along with another member of our team, was asked if we wanted to name her – we named her Carley.
Upon returning from China, I could not stop thinking about this little girl and printed off her picture to talk to Matt about sponsoring her. I left it on our kitchen counter and when he walked in, he saw it and asked “who is this?” and before I had a chance to answer, he said “I think she could be our daughter.”. Needless to say, I was completely shocked. So, we began the process of adoption, only soon to find out that this little girl had already been matched with a family. Although it was heart breaking, we knew we were still supposed to adopt and this little girl had a purpose – it was to change Matt’s heart.
Since then, a lot has happened in our lives. In 2008, we faced medical concerns with one of our children and received a diagnosis that was pretty tough to swallow. As parents, one of our worst fears was to have something be wrong with one of our children, but we trusted God wholeheartedly with the care of our child.
In 2009, we took a huge step of faith and Matt left his job of over 20 years. After 7 months of unemployment, God provided a job for Matt and we praise Him for that! God has drawn us closer to Him through these situations and we are so thankful for the peace and assurance we have knowing that He is in control and we are not.
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