Since February 5th, this little boy stole our hearts. Finally a face to settle deep in my heart. I carried his picture with me and proudly showed it off. I would catch myself staring at this terribly pixelated picture. I imagined this sweet boy being part of our family. I saw him at our kitchen table during family meals teasing his older sisters, riding in the back seat trying to make Annalee laugh, playing on the farm with his cousins. We had started to make plans for his room.
But after receiving a phone call yesterday, we know that this precious child will not be our son. Without giving too much detail, we can no longer move forward adopting F. I had prayed that if this day came then it would be because he was going back to his birth family. This would be joyful as every child deserves to be raised by their biological parents. But we live in a broken world. And this is not the case for the sweet boy who melted our hearts. We live in a world where adults use children as chess pieces. Where people put their own wants and needs before innocent children. In a world full of corruption. And now this little 6 year old boy will quite possibly never know the love of a family. We can pray that this will not be the case. We will advocate for him. His picture will remain on our refrigerator. He will always be special to us. The boy we thought was our son.
I do not know what God is trying to show us. If He wanted our hearts broken a little more, then He has surely succeeded. They're broken plum in half. Maybe F needed an advocate. I don't know. Please pray for this child. Pray that something miraculous will happen and he will not spend the rest of his childhood in an orphanage. I pray that he hadn't been told we were coming for him. I pray he's not waiting for us.
I do not know what lies ahead in our adoption process. Right now we are trying to grieve the loss of F's referral. We are trying to prepare our hearts to be joyful for our next referral. Whenever that will be.
