On that day I knew that we would be getting our much anticipated referral. We had seen our group number (777) posted on our agency site the night before. We had a plan for taking the call on three-way so that Andy and I could get all the information at the same time. You know what they say about the best laid plans. Well, Andy had worked all night the night before, and the call came earlier than expected. I could not get him to wake up, so I had to take the information without him. However, my work e-mail blocked every attempt from our agency, Andy, and my mom to forward the picture above to me. I got the information first on Julia, and Andy saw her picture first. Andy printed the picture (after weeding through 200 e-mails on dial-up), brought it to me at work, and then we went to get our other kids from school and show them.
What I didn't expect from just seeing the picture is how immediately I would fall in love. Nothing was going to stop me from getting to China once I had this picture in my hands.
I remember that during Julia's adoption process we held onto a well-known analogy. We knew we could not save all the orphans, but we could make a difference for one.
One day a boy was walking along the beach upon which hundreds of starfish had been washed up and now lay stranded on the sand.
As he continued walking, he noticed an old man in the distance, picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean.
He approached the the man, and asked, “What are you doing?”
The man replied, “Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The surf is up and the tide is going out. They need to be in the water, if I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.”
The boy said, “Don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can’t possibly make a difference!”
After listening politely, the old man bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it back into the surf.
Then he looked up, smiled at the boy, and said:
“I made a difference to that one.”
And this story leads me to my Gilgal moment. Gilgal means "circle", and Gilgal was the place where God brought the Israelites full circle and broke the old cycle. This was a place of restoration and promise. When we were headed to the airport in June 2005 to leave China with all of our children and both grandmas, our guide, Jocelyn, gave us some parting words. She recited this very story of the starfish, expressed gratitude to us on behalf of the CCAA, and talked about how helping families adopt gives her life meaning. I was stunned when she brought up the starfish story because it was one of many God-markers on Julia's adoption.
Seven years later, we have have experienced so much joy because of this girl. Her orphanage director called her an "impressive" girl, and that she is!
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