Listening

Wow, what a crazy couple days.
Jason stayed home from work on Tues. to be with me to get some stuff done with the referral. We needed to write up our LOI (Letter of Intent) to get sent asap to China. We wrote and sent it, it got translated and sent back to the agency and just had to be uploaded and submitted along with a few other things.
No problem, right?
Wrong.
We got a call on Tues. night from Jill, our social worker. She was just on her way home at 9pm because she had been struggling all day with a computer issue that wouldn't allow her to submit our paperwork. She was on the phone back and forth all day with a woman named Tu, who is the agency's liaison in China. Tu kept trying to reach someone at the CCAA (the place that facilitates all the adoptions) but was unable to because they were all off for mid-autumn festival. The problem was that after 72 hours (which happened on Tues. night) the lock is released and we lose the referral. Jill had called a couple other agencies and found out that one of them was not having the same problem. It was for this reason that we were sure she was lost for us. If the system is affecting only sporadic agencies, then the ones that aren't affected will have the opportunity to now lock into our little girl. Because CCAA was closed for 3 days, there was no way she wouldn't be snatched up in that time. She's a girl, under the age of 2, with a minor need....they don't stay unlocked on the SN list for long. Jill was very sorry, but there was nothing she could do.
We were so sad and very frustrated.
Could a computer glitch really just have taken this little one who's face we already adored?
Surely, God had not put her on our hearts only to take her away. We just didn't know what to think or how to feel.
The next day we woke up with the thought that if we were lucky we might get a new referral that week, but more than likely we felt we would be waiting another month.

At noon, I was at mom's house and Jill called me on my cell. She told me that the CCAA found out about the problem and discovered it was actually system wide. Every agency had the same problem. That meant that not only were there tons of people who got the same bad news as we did the night before, no one was able to lock into our child. They allowed everyone to re-lock the same child (something not normally allowed once the time frame ends) and extended the deadline for paperwork until noon that day. Jill found this out at 11:00am and frantically got all our papers uploaded and submitted just in time. I couldn't believe what I was hearing so I asked her just to be sure I wasn't misunderstanding her.....You mean we got her back??

Yes. We did.

I had woke up that Wednesday morning to my alarm going off to my favorite Christian station. The DJ was in the middle of a sentence that caught my attention, even in my half asleep mind. "....maybe you got a call yesterday that changed something in your life, and now you don't know what to do. Offer it up to the Lord and cast your worries on Him. Trust that His plan will be layed out for you."
I made the decision that morning to do just that.
Surrender it all to Him.
There was nothing I could do to change the situation.....but He could....and He did. God is so good to us and we are forever grateful.