Adoption Paperwork is not fun!

I am having an adoption paperwork is not fun day!  It really is a lot of things piling up this week and it is making me a little nuts.  All of this paperwork is crashing down upon us and I feel like I am overbooked and underpaid in the paperwork department.  I just want all of the bulk of it done so I can go around and have everything verified and certified.  We are for the most part getting there, but as we wait a child in another orphanage passed away this week. The cutest little bug you have ever seen.  She never knew the love of a family, but tonight she is cradled in the arms of God.  People may ask, well that couldn't happen to your son? Could it?  Only God truly knows the answer to that. There is no way to know.  Our son is, we believe, healthy, but he could have problems the orphanage does not know about. Our son has a minor urology SN.
 I once followed a little boy who appeared to be completely healthy.  He had a very minor special need and I looked at his picture more than a few times, then out of nowhere it was posted on a blog that he passed away from a seizure in the middle of the night.  No one seems to know why.  If your child had a seizure, you would probably hear something or some way some how get to them in the middle of the night.  In a room full of children, 20-30 there is so much noise and it is amplified because everything in an orphanage is about cleaning.  It is a hospital type environment.  No carpet, nothing to stop noise from bouncing in the room.  This little boy died and no one heard him. Honestly, the Nanny on duty was probably tending to other crying children and got to him too late.  Adoption is not easy to follow or endure.  It is not for the faint at heart.  A baby died this week in a hospital that LWB was taking care of.  She could not recover from a respiratory infection.  I remember praying for her this week. God decided to take her home.  Her little weak body had had enough.  

People get this weird idea that an orphanage is like a preschool.  Nope.  It is like a hospital with tiny little metal beds, metal cribs, metal cots, and some have metal mini bunk beds. When you go there you are amazed at how many can fit in such a small room.  There is a part of the fireman's wife in me that wants to know how they would all get out. It cringes me to think how so few ladies could get so many babies out or so many toddlers or so many 4 and 5 year olds.  I think about these things when we do fire drills at school.  It just comes to me.  How would they get them all out?  God would have to.  I am not even sure they have fire drills.  I just don't know.  I hold these things close to my heart.

Luke 2:19
¹⁹ But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.

Have you ever thought about what that meant in the Bible? I have.  I can not erase what I saw in our daughter's orphanage and I am sure our son's orphanage will live with me forever.  I remember reading a book by Kay Warren where she discusses her experiences in Africa when visiting children effected by the aids epidemic there.  She says many times in the book she was ruined.  I am forever ruined by what my heart has seen in China.  I am not the same person nor will I ever be.  So as I ponder these words about Mary I think I understand them in a sense.  I will hold and treasure all of those memories in my heart. These things will not be forgotten.  I will always remember.  I can not adopt every childl but I can pray for them all.  I can ask God to remember them in His Kingdom in Heaven. I can ask for prayers and I can lift them up.
I can treasure these things in my heart. My heart is forever ruined .