Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Reality is Love

For about 60 hours now I have been a father. My world has changed for sure. We first heard about our daughter in late November and on Monday morning we got to meet her, hold her, and make her ours forever.

We left Atlanta for China on Wednesday morning of last week, arriving in China on Thursday. We spent Friday and Saturday touring in Beijing seeing Tianemin Square, The Forbidden Palace and I got to climb the Great Wall of China. Once in a lifetime opportunities for most people.

On Sunday we flew from Beijing to Zhoungzhou (pronounced Jung Jo) the capital of the Henan province. I slept surprisingly well Sunday night knowing that at 9am on Monday we would meet and receive our LynnMarie.

The entire experience has been wonderful. God placed a perfect baby in our family. She was born with special medical needs, but the care she received in her forst 12 months has done wonders already and her prognosis for a normal life is excellent.

LynnMarie was assigned to a specific orphanage in ths province, but with her medical conditions, she was allowed to go to the care of an American woman who is here to teach nursing but has starated a foster home for special needs orphans. This afternoon we met this lady and visited the two apartments she uses for the babies/children. It was an awesome experience seeing the heart of a woman and dthe hand of God working through her. Her kids have needs including heart defects, missing limbs, spina bifida, deafness and even an albino litle boy who will be going to a forever family in the USA pretty soon.

The greatest thing is these kids are cared for and are truly LOVED. Several nannies are emplyed full-time to care for the children and there is an American college student working as an intern at this time. It was a great hope for us that we would be able to meet our Angel in the flesh and see the environment in which LynnMarie was cared for and loved. The nanny's faces lit up as soon as they saw LynnMarie with us and though parting once again had to be bittersweet, they know the love they gave her will be continued forever.

I have a minor issue with downloading pictures from my camera to our laptop, but as soon as it is resolved, photos will be coming!

6 comments:

Donna said...

Sounds like daddyhood is quite becoming on you :) Where are the pics??!?!

Unknown said...

Donna, did you not read the last sentence silly girl? he needs a cable to get the pics to his posts but he as a lot I tell you

Alyson and Ford said...

Thank you for sharing your story... we have been following your journey and are so very happy for you!

Alyzabeth's Mommy

Fliss and Mike Adventures said...

That is so great that you got to experience this... to see first hand where she had spent her first few months of her life... love to you both - well, the three of you now :)

Jeff said...

It's certainly good to know how much care LynnMarie received in her first year. We're all looking forward to y'all getting home!

Jose said...

You have deserve and have all the right to be the proud daddy. Congratulations! Enjoy that baby, I can tell you from experience that she'll give you many wonderful experiences.