Goodbye, precious little boy!

Today we said goodbye to our precious little eight year old boy. It was not meant to be. Although we never met him in person, we know a lot about him and have seen pictures of him and his beautiful smile. He will always be with us in our hearts.

We received a call from CPS this afternoon, letting us know that the decision had been made to leave him in his current foster placement and that they would be adopting him. Obviously, this is definitely what is best for him. Unfortunately, this decision should have been made months ago before the adoption process was begun outside of the foster family.

CPS never meant to put us in this position or to hurt our children (Suzy took it really, really hard). Mistakes happen and we were caught in the middle. We do not believe that anything happens by chance, so obviously, God has a great plan in mind. I was tearful when I talked with CPS (but somehow managed to keep it together while we were on the phone). This CPS office is already taking steps to make sure that what happened to us will never happen to another family. We also are now more knowledgeable (as well as our adoption agency) and we will also make sure that this never happens to us again.

I called our adoption agency to let them know that we had received the call (they already knew what the decision was, but CPS wanted to be the one to make the call as they were ones that needed to apologize and answer our questions). I was tearful with our adoption agency representative as well, but still managed to keep it together. She did tell me that she had already received a call from the CPS office that we had been working with about another possible placement. The CPS office and our adoption agency are going to give us some time to recuperate and then we will make a decision as a couple if we want to do this again.

Through this experience we have felt God's protecting arms around us, and have definitely felt all of the prayers that we received about this situation. I am really upset about putting our children through this, and CPS is also upset about that. We never get our children or family members involved until we are at a spot where there is no going back on our part or CPS. This was just something that happened because a step was missed in the process. We do take great comfort in knowing that this little boy is where he really wanted to be.

Mark and I are at peace with this. I had already made the decision yesterday to move on by scheduling our quarterly home visit with our adoption agency for next week. They are required to be out for a visit within 7 days of new placement, so we had cancelled ours in February, since we were anticipating that he would be moving in the next three-four weeks. This will also give us a chance for us to sit down and de-brief the events of this week as well as discussing what our next step is going to be.

We cling to our life verse; Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you", declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future".

To quote my husband's tweet earlier today: "If I didn't serve a sovereign God, I would be angry right now". So thankful that we serve a sovereign God.

Did we just lose our child?

That is a question that we are asking ourselves tonight. We were supposed to meet our new son this afternoon at 3:30 PM at a park about 90 minutes from our house. At 1:30 PM I received a phone call from our adoption agency. There was to be no visitation. Our licensing worker had very little information about what had happened. She did say that she would be hearing from CPS next Tuesday after they have a meeting. We do know that this has nothing to do with us. It is something that is going on elsewhere in the system and they have put a stop to his adoption placement.

I had a 1:30 PM meeting (which I had left to take this phone call since I knew who was calling me), so I had to text Mark that the visitation had been cancelled and then endured (what seemed liked forever) a 75 minute work meeting. My boss knew I had to leave and at some point during the meeting he asked why I was still there and I told him that the phone call I had stepped out to take was cancelling the visitation. The look on his face was one of shock, but he didn't say any more. The tears flowed immediately after the meeting was over and I was able to close my office door.

The tears have continued off and on tonight, as I go through the grieving process of uncertainty. Have we really lost him? CPS does not know the answer to this question. This is the first in all of years of doing this that we have made it this far in the adoption process to have it stopped. It has always been earlier in the process so we are in uncharted territory for us.

We told the other children that we don't know yet what is going on. We haven't suggested to them that we are not going to get him. I want to send as few mixed messages as possible. We don't know yet, so that is what they know. We did send an email to the CPS caseworker letting them know that as painful as this was, we still desired him in our family, but we truly want to do what they feel is best for him.

We know that God has a plan for our lives and for this child, whether he join our family or not. So for now, we are just taking it one step at a time, still walking outside of our boat.

We appreciate your prayers for our family as we wait this out. This does give me more time to focus on getting my asthma under control. I've had a bad flare-up for the past eight weeks, so I'm changing steroids and using my rescue inhalers on a regular basis daily as well as daily breathing treatments. (Of course, that would require me going to the pharmacy to fill the new prescriptions, which I forgot today and didn't have any time to do yesterday). I did get all of my blood work done today and chest x-ray to confirm that this is just asthma and not walking pneumonia.

I am humming one of my favorite songs, "Our God is Greater" by Chris Tomlin. Such a comfort tonight.