Today
was a tough day. Olivia slept well, she
got up at around 8 or so and we had to be ready to go at 9:30. So, we all went for breakfast and because it
was so crowded at the regular restaurant, they “upgraded” us to the 30th
floor restaurant…quite a view from the top!
We went back to the civil affairs office to complete the adoption paperwork,
where she started to cry again. She
continued crying softly throughout the meeting, but according to China,
everything is official and we are her parents. The rest of the time here is
applying for a passport and getting her visa to return to the US.
We
had the afternoon off, so we came back to the hotel for lunch and a rest. Olivia ate a nice lunch (she didn’t eat much
for dinner or breakfast) and then said she was tired so we put her down for a
nap. Scott and Bryce went to workout and
Olivia got up and started to cry again. She basically cried all afternoon. Not a screaming and kicking cry (like she did
the first day), but more of a long whimper with lots of tears. We tried everything to get her to stop, but
to no avail… We knew that we were making progress because she wanted Nanette to
hold her, but would not even let Scott touch her. We took her out for a walk and she had a hard
time with everything. After dinner, we were sitting in the room and Scott was
being extremely silly trying to count in Chinese with her and finally got her
to laugh and smile. She even said some
words, counted to 10 in English and Chinese and sat in his lap (she didn’t want
to even hold his hand today). We then
ended the night with a shower and a game of bop the balloon, which she played
and looked like she was having fun. God
is so gracious to allow us to get a glimpse of her sweet personality at the end
of a grueling emotional day!
Family worship time: Each night at home
we have a time as a family where we read the bible, pray, and talk about the
blessings in our lives. Each child is
expected to say one blessing that they received and one blessing that they did
for someone else. When we were doing
that last night, Olivia was having a hard time and upset (as expected). The amazing thing about this is that she
received a huge blessing that day and didn’t even know it. She got a mom, dad, 2 brothers and a sister
that day…but was very upset and sad. We
constantly tell the children that, “we are blessed by God in order to be a
blessing to others.” That day, Olivia
was blessed by getting a family, but she blessed us all by coming into our
family…and she didn’t even know it! Isn’t that a picture of each of our lives
every day? God blesses us and we often
gripe and complain; yet He still does it and we often don’t even recognize
it. Adoption is simply a picture of the
Gospel, continually reminding us of our relationship with the Father.
No comments:
Post a Comment