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Choosing Our Son
Up to this point, our journey to find
a son included various forks in the road where we were forced to make choices. God always seemed to give us wisdom and worked through the circumstances to make it obvious which fork to follow. We had one major choice to make before we reached the point of actually choosing
a child out of a roomful of other children.
The National Adoption Center in Kiev contains books of available children. Each region has a set of books, and each child is represented by one page which includes their name, birthdate, medical diagnosis, and usually a picture. Adoptive parents page through these books and choose a child or set of children from one region or orphanage to go visit.
Our regional facilitator, Julya, helped us weed through the books pulling out the pages of younger children as we saw them. As we reviewed them, we decided to visit the orphanage with the most young children available - Lotikovo orphanage located in the region of Slavianoserbsk in the province of Lugans'k. (Ukrainian map)
When finally reached Lotikovo on May 14, we were ushered into the orphanage director's office where we sat and waited for the caretakers to bring the available children. Three children walked in first. Our eyes were immediately drawn to one blonde boy, but he stopped short of the doorway and did not want to come in. A caretaker sat him on the couch next to her where he cowered with his head bowed and crocodile tears filling his chocolate-brown eyes.
The others gathered in front of us, and we all stared at each other as the director began giving their names, birthdates, and any major medical information. More caretakers brought 5-6 more children who were not yet walking. We were surprised to hear the ages of all these boys because they were so small and developmentally delayed when compared to our American-born babies who get good care and nutrition.
We narrowed our choice down to two three-year-old boys based on medical conditions we felt we could handle with our limited resources. The first boy, Atoly, was clever, explored the room, and interacted with us. But both of our hearts had been drawn to the scared little guy with chocolate-brown eyes. One of the caretakers placed him in Pete's lap where he huddled close to him. When we had narrowed our choice to the two, Pete started tickling the little guy in his lap. A smile and a dimple appeared, and then a little giggle escaped. Soon Pete was "chasing" a laughing little boy around the director's desk!
So how do we choose? We believe that God not only works through circumstances, but also through our feelings. God's arrangement of various circumstances brought us to this room with the choice of two boys in front of us. The only thing left to rely on was our hearts, and our hearts said, "Choose Ivan!" We believe that God led us to choose Ivan because He has something very special planned for him.
