Sunday, February 14, 2016
February 14, 2008
We did not sleep well the night before. I was still too uptight over our ordeal the night before. I was up pacing the floor, shedding some tears, and just worrying about everything that could go wrong the next day. Morning of the 14th finally came and we got ready to go to the agency to meet our daughter. We were about to leave our room when there came a knock at the door. A little unnerving, but really unnerving when it was a staff member saying we had a phone call at the front desk. Whoever was calling us from the States it couldn't be good news. Before I got to the phone we did find out that the call was from MI. Panic set in as I thought it had to do with Emma and the way the adoption had gone so far I wouldn't be surprised if there had been another delay. My hand was shaking as the front desk lady handed me the phone. It was indeed a staff member from our agency in MI. Her first words were, "Everything is okay with Emma. This call is about the other baby." She went on to tell me that there had been an honest, but terrible mistake. I really don't like calling it a mistake, it was more like an oversight, but the bottom line was that to make the oversight correct it would end with someone being hurt. They were calling to tell us that it would be the Korean agency's decision on how to proceed and that the agency wanted to talk with us about the situation. It was quite the turn of events for the day.
We thankfully found our way to the agency without any problems. It was both humbling and exciting to see the agency and to see where Samuel had been just a few years before. It gave us so much more insight to those first few months of our children's lives. We were brought into this office and we tried to communicate the best we could with the Korean manager of the agency. We expressed our deepest desire that we would love to raise this baby girl in our home with her natural brother. We told them that we already loved her and in loving her we only wanted what was best for her. We left that meeting not sure what was understood or what the outcome would be. It was in that moment that the miracle of that meeting hit us. All those months of waiting and fighting for Emma all made sense as we sat face to face with the Korean agency pleading on behalf of a child we may never meet.
We got into an agency van and we drove about 15 minutes to Emma's foster family's house. We pulled up to several large apartment buildings that resembled what we would see as low-income housing here in the States. We got on an elevator and walked to the apartment where our daughter had been living the past 8-9 months. The door opened and behind the kind Korean woman at the door was our daughter, sitting on the floor playing with a toy unaware of how her little world was about to be turned upside down. We were told to take off our shoes while we were still at the agency, but in our excitement we totally forgot. We did quickly apologize and took off our shoes. For about 15 minutes we just sat on the floor watching her. She would crawl and sit on her foster mother's lap and ask for something to eat. It took every bit of restraint not to swoop her up in my arms, but I knew I needed to let her warm up to us. I had brought a book from home that had our family's pictures in them. I had also brought her a Valentine's teddy bear. After a while I was able to get her to come to me. She sat in my lap and we looked at the picture book together and I thought my heart would surely burst. We stayed at the house a little over an hour. Through the social worker, we were told all about Emma's likes and dislikes, we choked down some food offered by the foster mother, and we just marveled at this beautiful baby girl. The hard part came when we knew we would have to leave her there one more day. We would be taking custody of her the next day at the agency. The foster mother walked us back to the elevator. The doors closed and my heart sank. I knew it would only be one more day, but I hated leaving her. We went back to our hotel and finally got some rest. We did a little shopping and sightseeing. I wish that we had done more things in Korea, but we were so exhausted and we really were there on one mission, bring Emma home. We ate dinner at a J. Alexander's, but it was a little different than the American version. We rented a movie online and just stayed in and got rested up for our big day on the 15th, finally getting Emma forever.
We did not sleep well the night before. I was still too uptight over our ordeal the night before. I was up pacing the floor, shedding some tears, and just worrying about everything that could go wrong the next day. Morning of the 14th finally came and we got ready to go to the agency to meet our daughter. We were about to leave our room when there came a knock at the door. A little unnerving, but really unnerving when it was a staff member saying we had a phone call at the front desk. Whoever was calling us from the States it couldn't be good news. Before I got to the phone we did find out that the call was from MI. Panic set in as I thought it had to do with Emma and the way the adoption had gone so far I wouldn't be surprised if there had been another delay. My hand was shaking as the front desk lady handed me the phone. It was indeed a staff member from our agency in MI. Her first words were, "Everything is okay with Emma. This call is about the other baby." She went on to tell me that there had been an honest, but terrible mistake. I really don't like calling it a mistake, it was more like an oversight, but the bottom line was that to make the oversight correct it would end with someone being hurt. They were calling to tell us that it would be the Korean agency's decision on how to proceed and that the agency wanted to talk with us about the situation. It was quite the turn of events for the day.
We thankfully found our way to the agency without any problems. It was both humbling and exciting to see the agency and to see where Samuel had been just a few years before. It gave us so much more insight to those first few months of our children's lives. We were brought into this office and we tried to communicate the best we could with the Korean manager of the agency. We expressed our deepest desire that we would love to raise this baby girl in our home with her natural brother. We told them that we already loved her and in loving her we only wanted what was best for her. We left that meeting not sure what was understood or what the outcome would be. It was in that moment that the miracle of that meeting hit us. All those months of waiting and fighting for Emma all made sense as we sat face to face with the Korean agency pleading on behalf of a child we may never meet.
We got into an agency van and we drove about 15 minutes to Emma's foster family's house. We pulled up to several large apartment buildings that resembled what we would see as low-income housing here in the States. We got on an elevator and walked to the apartment where our daughter had been living the past 8-9 months. The door opened and behind the kind Korean woman at the door was our daughter, sitting on the floor playing with a toy unaware of how her little world was about to be turned upside down. We were told to take off our shoes while we were still at the agency, but in our excitement we totally forgot. We did quickly apologize and took off our shoes. For about 15 minutes we just sat on the floor watching her. She would crawl and sit on her foster mother's lap and ask for something to eat. It took every bit of restraint not to swoop her up in my arms, but I knew I needed to let her warm up to us. I had brought a book from home that had our family's pictures in them. I had also brought her a Valentine's teddy bear. After a while I was able to get her to come to me. She sat in my lap and we looked at the picture book together and I thought my heart would surely burst. We stayed at the house a little over an hour. Through the social worker, we were told all about Emma's likes and dislikes, we choked down some food offered by the foster mother, and we just marveled at this beautiful baby girl. The hard part came when we knew we would have to leave her there one more day. We would be taking custody of her the next day at the agency. The foster mother walked us back to the elevator. The doors closed and my heart sank. I knew it would only be one more day, but I hated leaving her. We went back to our hotel and finally got some rest. We did a little shopping and sightseeing. I wish that we had done more things in Korea, but we were so exhausted and we really were there on one mission, bring Emma home. We ate dinner at a J. Alexander's, but it was a little different than the American version. We rented a movie online and just stayed in and got rested up for our big day on the 15th, finally getting Emma forever.
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