Losing Both

James 4:13 "Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that."

Today was supposed to be a day of good news. Our paperwork was submitted today and we had waited all day for confirmation via phone or email.

The confirmation came that our paperwork was submitted. With it came heartwrenching news.

The girl, "Marlena", died yesterday during surgery to repair her heart.
The boy, "John Mark", is not available for adoption by request of his parents.

The hoped-for news has arrived, but has arrived bitter and dark. In the few lines of an email we have lost them both.

It is odd - we have not held these little ones in our arms. We have not seen them face-to-face or heard their little voices. Yet we have thought about them and picked out toys for them and prayed for them and and shared their first Christmas and loved them from around the world. The sharp pain of loss is no different than losing our own.

We are left with only pictures and ashes and questions in our hearts.

----

The Hebrew alphabet has a character "VAV" or "WAW". It is shaped like a flag blowing in the wind, and can be used used to indicate a change in the direction of the writer's thoughts. I write the explanation in lieu of writing the character itself.


This is not the end.

To our friends and family who have supported us this far, we say "Thank you". Thank you for your love and care and putting up with us these last few months. Thank you for believing in us.

This is not the end of our adoption process. Our hearts are still burdened with the desire to adopt children with special needs. We still may be traveling this Spring to adopt (after all, our paperwork was submitted successfully). We will pick other children from the same area later, but for now, the grief is still too near.

--Ezra and Kelly