Finding Lucie

I want to tell you the story of Lucie, or about how she came to be a part of our lives. Many of you know the story behind our deciding to adopt a child with Down syndrome, and how we came to find Rosalie. The part B of this story is one that I have always been reluctant to share. As I look back on in now, I can see God engineering it all, and the fact that so many things had to come together to bring her to us makes me treasure her even more.

Some weeks after we started to pursue Rosalie, another little girl about the same age completely grabbed my heart. (I will fast forward to tell you now that she is in a home with a wonderful Christian family, and once again, God knew best!) I really felt at the time that I wanted to have two little girls with Down syndrome to grow up together. When I saw little, “Nora” I started to try to convince my husband of the same, and to pray about it. It took weeks to convince him to try to bring her home, too, and involved him praying on his knees at church for guidance and being told “Yes”. Unfortunately, Nora’s file was not with our agency, and though we tried for weeks and through different avenues to get her file, we were not successful. I was devastated, but also still sure that we were supposed to bring home a second daughter with Down syndrome. 

Our agency had very few waiting children with Down syndrome listed with them. In fact we had successfully transferred Rosalie’s file to this agency, hoping to reuse our dossier. We found out early in the process that since we had brought home two the previous year on our last dossier, that we would not be able to reuse it. This was another green light to us, though, for adopting a second child on this trip, as we wouldn’t have been able to do that on a reuse. Again, sure that we were to bring home a second, I tried very hard to get a few precious little girls’ files from various agencies. Some were not willing, and others were willing but had other families interested in the same child. (It breaks my heart now to see one of those children still waiting now!) 

Finally we returned to our agency list, hoping to find a child with Down syndrome whose file we wouldn’t have to transfer from another agency. There was one little girl who was absolutely adorable and quite young. That was it, one child with Down syndrome. She was precious beyond belief, but her file was very out of date, and we felt uncomfortable moving forward without an update. One evening we decided to step out in faith and move forward. Some weeks later we received PA. This is the part that I dread sharing. As 100% convinced as I was about bringing home Rosalie - even though we were uncertain if she was able to walk at the age of 5, with this little girl I quickly felt very uncertain. In fact writing this now, I can feel the same sense of almost dread that I felt for weeks and weeks back then. It was almost a foreboding. We received updates, and she was darling even still, but I just had this horrible feeling that if we brought her home it was not going to be right. My husband and I would talk about it and pray over and over, continuing to decide that we couldn’t just back out and leave her there, that we had made a commitment and no matter what she deserved a family.

During this time period we got two RFE’s from USCIS. Those dreaded pink slips that tell you that your immigration application wasn’t going to go through until you provided something else they wanted. The first RFE ended up causing the second because our son turned 18 in the time period we thought we would already be through that process. The delay caused us 89 days of waiting for approval. At the time I thought, ‘One day we will look back on this and know why.’ I just didn’t know it would be sooner than we thought! 

Towards the end of dealing with getting our first immigration clearances, we found out that some major changes were happening at our agency. At the time there were some issues that we and many others that used them had with this agency, but we had decided to use them again because we thought we were going to be able to reuse our dossier, which meant that we had to also use the same agency. Because of these sudden big agency changes, we had the opportunity to change agencies before our dossier went to China (something we would have been too far along to do if we hadn’t had setbacks with USCIS). We made a decision as to who we wanted to go with instead, and this agency was able to get our past agency to release both of the girls’ files back to CCCWA and then they locked both files. We had to submit a Letter of Intent for each of them - one at a time. We submitted our LOI for Rosalie, and received Pre-approval for China. As we were waiting for that first pre-approval and before we submitted LOI for the second daughter, I saw Lucie. 

One of my Facebook friends, who would later tell me that she rarely posted advocacy profiles, posted Lucie’s sweet face on one of the Down syndrome Adoption groups. I knew when I saw her. I just knew. I watched the little video that came with her post, and it just confirmed it. I called my husband who was away on a trip and said, ‘You are going to think I am absolutely crazy, but I think I found our daughter and she just happens to be with the agency we transferred to!” I sent Lucie’s photos and video to him and he called me back and agreed that we should pursue her. 

What did this mean for the other little girl whose file was now transferred to this second agency, but who would now not have someone sending in an LOI for her? That was a huge choice that we had to make. Of course there was the possibility that she would never be chosen by another family, and we would be somewhat responsible for it. I can only say that it felt right, and it’s what we chose to do. Thankfully, this other precious girl, whose file we had carried with us to a very well loved agency, was quickly picked up by another family. We have been able to see her in photos with her wonderful new family as she came home not long after our girls did. I can only say that perhaps we were a conduit for her to be able to find her family. And I know without a doubt that Lucie is supposed to be ours. Rosalie and Lucie immediately formed a bond in China that I imagine will last a lifetime. Their personalities are so very different, and yet both so beautiful, that they match perfectly. God knew all along. He always seems to like to do that in my life. To make things happen in such a way that I could never think for a moment that it was engineered by any other than Him. 

I am not sure why I am finally sharing this two years after the fact, except to say - give each other grace. Especially in the adoption community. We never truly know each other’s hearts and motives. We may even make mistakes, but that doesn’t make us bad people. God can work through these trials in the adoption world, and sometimes he even uses them for His good purpose. My experience has helped me have more grace for others, more understanding. Hopefully it won’t take hard decisions and/or mistakes of your own for you to be able to have that same understanding and grace for others who are dealing with some of the hard choices of adoption.