Another Long Emotional Day

“Fear not, for I am with thee; I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather you from the west; I will say to the north, Give them up; and to the south, Do not keep them back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth;” Isaiah 43:5-6

As I fell asleep last night, I cried. I am so blessed to be given such a precious child. It feels like I have always known her and that she has always been mine. Other than the fact that we don’t speak the same language all the time, we were designed for one another. I believe this is why God creates the lonely in families…so children can be joined with their forever families.

She wakes up and is the sweetest thing. She wants to snuggle for at least 15 minutes until she is awake. Once she is awake, she is ready to go. Well, I should say she is happy, laughing and a joy to be with…until you want to dress her. This is when she often starts crying. I think she knows that after we get dressed, we leave the comfort and security of our room.

She calmed down enough to eat a good breakfast. She was fine leaving the hotel, even though we walked outside and the heat took your breath away. You didn’t even have to move and you were sweating. (At 8:30pm, the temp was 90 degrees and the heat index was 96 degrees just to give you an idea how hot it was today.) Everything changed about 15 minutes later.

Today, we went to the Guangdong Folk Arts Museum. It was stunning. Jade didn’t think so. I don’t know if it was the heat, the fact she didn’t get her full 12 hours of sleep, or just part of this process. She seems to get better and then when we do large group things in some places, she loses it. It started like it usually does with rambling through all the family names as she cries. It breaks my heart when she gets crying so hard she can’t catch her breath. Today was different though. She just kept saying “go home”. Eventually after 45 minutes, she got so exhausted, she fell asleep on me. It was hard to find a spot in the shade because I couldn’t leave her hat on her. She was way too hot and too emotional. While she was sleeping, many Chinese people stopped to look at her and ask me questions. I was able to answer many of them with my bad tones and some simple phrases or bits of info. One older man kept walking back and forth in front of us. After his last trip past us, he told me she was piaoliang, which means beautiful. I agree.

Once the group was done here, they headed to a tea house. I opted out of the tea house. There was no need to push her any further today. We sat on the bus. She slept for a little while. When she woke up, she wanted to eat. Food seems to comfort her. By the time the group returned to the bus, my baby girl was back to normal.

Tomorrow should be challenging for her as well. We have to return to have the children’s TB test evaluated at 1pm. Keep us all in prayer. Jade’s has raised and swelled some. I believe they only allow 5 mm before they have to run an xray on the child to see if they actually have TB. Jade’s is larger than I would like it to be as many of the families have said their child has no mark on them at all. Just pray. He is in control. It will all depend on how she handles all of this on whether we will join everyone on Shaiman Island for shopping and walking around.

Update…just ran into a family who just adopted with our group as I came down to Starbucks to send this out. They said their friend adopted a little albino and she comes alive inside and at night. Maybe the light is effecting her more than I realize.