We might lose Hanbin to his foster family

Well, it has been a horrible week. Wednesday afternoon our social worker called us with the news that Hanbin's foster family wants to adopt him. After that, I pretty much did not hear what she had to say. In short, next week a Korean social worker will visit the family and evaluate the situation to decide if they or we can adopt him. Now, where my anger comes from is he was in their home for over two months before we received his referral, and during that time he was open for Korean adoption and not yet on the international adoption list.

Why not ask to adopt him then? Why did it take his getting referred to us for them to decide they want him? Who knows. What we do know is Korea really values domestic adoption, so we may have very little chance of bringing him home. What we have working for us is the mom is 48 and the dad is 52 and their youngest is 19. We should find out sometime next week Korea's decision. No one involved in our side of this process has ever heard of this happening. Our side also has no control over what happens. There is no reasoning or making a case for us. We just sit and wait for the Korean adoption system to make their decision.

We are not telling Elizabeth anything until we know exactly what is going to happen.

We will post Korea's decision when we hear it. Meanwhile, I hope the worst of the weeping has past. It was pretty intense over the last 48 hours. I am sure there will be another wave of tears, but at least they are further apart and less intense. There is just a deep sadness now. That will last for awhile, but I can work with that.

Meanwhile, we pray. We pray that God allows Hanbin to come to our home as our son, but we also know that God has a plan and ultimately we are content and at peace with His plan. If he has another child in mind as our son, we ask that He holds our hearts through this pain and gives us wisdom to guide Elizabeth through this. Life has taught both of us that God's plans for us are usually better than anything we could ever dream of on our own. Sometimes it is a little harder to arrive at our dreams than we would like it to be, but in the end He gives us exactly what He knows our hearts need.

How vain

Every Saturday Neil takes Elizabeth to breakfast and then they go do different activities. It is the one morning a week I stay out of the outfitting business with Elizabeth. Neil does not care how coordinated her clothes are; that seems to be a mom thing. I figure people will see her with her dad and understand mom had nothing to do with the loud, colorful, mismatched outfit and shaggy hair.
Well, this past Saturday they came home from their outing all excited because a reporter stopped when she saw them playing in Richland creek and photographed and interviewed them. One who is less self involved would have shared in the excitement and would have immediately been thrilled to have this precious father-daughter moment captured in print. Well, what was my immediate thought? "Oh shoot! What was she wearing?!" I still feel a little bad about that being the first thing that came to mind. At least it was a fleeting thought. I am very excited for them, and cannot wait to see the article and read what they did with Elizabeth's first interview.