zombie

I'm writing this at 1 am. Of late, I've found myself awake in bed, just like in the olden days before YoYo came to us, waiting for sleep to finally come to me at 4 or 5 or 6 in the morning. Shane is remarkable, always supportive, caring for YoYo until I can stumble out of bed. Some nights, I wonder about YoYo's spina bifida, about all that is still unknown to us about his condition and what his future holds. Sometimes, I think about my grandmother's recipe for pound cake, or how to secure microloans for Kurdish women in Northern Iraq who could sell their yarn to eager American knitters and give their children an education, or how to start a canning business in a small Tibetan town which wants better dentistry for its monks. And then I think of the families waiting for children.

Granted, there are a lot of families who come to international adoption with fluffy thoughts of rescuing orphans and having true religion and claiming a child who was born "in the wrong tummy." Some bring infertility baggage or noninterested spouses or racist pandering with them. But there are ones who hope, too, ones who know that the child they adopt will not be an orphan biologically, but instead will have been "orphaned" by circumstance. They know that their child already has a name, a precious commodity when possessions and personal history are lacking. They will try to give their child room to grieve, and they will not be embarrassed when their child acts out at a restaurant in some lonely province (I confess my failure there), because they will know that they are the latest power-brokers in a sea of ever-changing faces and loss. And they will have a mighty trial ahead of them if they are with our agency.

Our agency has been denied Hague accreditation AFTER being reviewed a second time. One by one, their employees with the China program have been "reassigned" to another country's adoption program or have "resigned" to pursue other interests. The chat group is full of angry and frightened parents. I'm sure there are many like us, who have stretched past their financial abilities, who could not even dream of bringing a child home but for the love and support of a faithful community of friends and family. I wonder if they will be able to make it. If they will be able to afford being transferred to another agency to complete their adoption. If they will decide that they were never meant to have a child. If part of them will die. And of the ones who are easier to dislike, if they will be further hardened. If they will try to cast out government demons, blaming the CIS (immigrations) or the COA (accreditation board) for calling out our agency's wrongdoing. If their marriage will fail under the strain of so many deaths. If they will decide they are alone.

Their emails and questions echo in my mind each night on into morning, and I am powerless to help them. I know that I could post a caution in the chat group, that I could tell them to run and run and run to another agency, to transfer their files themselves...but what would that do? What would I think if I was one of them and read that? I know (or trust that I cannot grasp the fullness of) the sovereignty of my Maker. How will these people be rescued? Who will bring them hope?

After our scramble in early April to redo our I-171, which our agency completely mishandled, I thought, "They should be shut down. No parent should have to go through the added strain of not knowing whether they'll find that their paperwork is wrong or inadequate until it's too late and they can't finalize." Now, I ponder the fate of 2,500 adopting families. They are people. Some have children. Some do not. Some have room left to hope. Some hang, even now, by the slenderest thread.

And they keep me awake.