Kim and I looked at each other in a state of semi-shock. Amy (our Chinese guide) was briefing us for our first encounter with the children we’d flown halfway around the world to meet. It was us and the Roux family. We were adopting 9-year old Annabelle while they were coming to get their baby girl Sophia. Amy told the Roux fam to expect a few tears, but Sophia would adjust. She looked at us and said, “Your daughter is older, and she will not want to go with you. She will not speak to you, look at you, or respond well to you. This will be hard.”
Call us naive, but for the first time it dawned on us that this had the potential to be a huge disaster. We were positive that this was the right thing, that God was leading us to adopt. What if Annabelle didn’t like us, or didn’t want to live with us, or didn’t want to be part of our family…
So how did the initial meeting go? I wrote about it here. The blogs from that whole trip are here.
It went better than I could have hoped, better than I ever dreamed it could be.
That was 3 years ago today. The last 3 years have been full of learning experiences, challenges, and growth opportunities. And they’ve been wonderful years! God has blessed us in more ways than we can recount.
It turns out that Annabelle was the gateway to us discovering a passion for adoption, and the process of adopting her prepared us as a family for multiple adoptions.
I spent a few minutes today looking back through the pictures, reading the blog entries from that day and the days that followed. It’s amazing to see how much Annabelle has grown physically, emotionally, academically, and spiritually over such a short period of time.
Annabelle is a leader in our family, almost like a little mother hen. She is an organizer, a cleaner, very capable of being responsible for others. She looks over the top of her glasses (kind of like the librarian would!) when one of her siblings gets out of line. She loves to laugh and often gets silly when she feels like it’s safe to do so! She’s a good student, a great sister, and a wonderful daughter. She’s learning to live in grace, to accept the fact that she isn’t (and doesn’t have to be) perfect.
I had no idea what kind of change this would make in my heart and in our life. It’s got to be one of the best things ever in the life of Team Sublett…
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