Should I just permanently carry a tissue in my hand? The tears of happiness and joy and amazement that keep springing to my eyes are constant! I'm such a big baby! But I don't care - I am thankful to share we are moving forward to adopt a 3-year-old little boy who has completely stolen our hearts!! He has been given an English name, Oliver, and although we never would have found it on our own, we LOVE it! It really fits him.
Where do I begin telling you about him? He is fabulous and gorgeous and amazing. Our beautiful little guy has albinism, which means he is lacking pigmentation in his body. He has pale skin that is very sensitive to the sun (he matches his Momma :) and beautiful white hair (a special gift so he looks like his Memaw Cathy). Even white eyelashes! His vision is low and his eyes are very sensitive to both sunlight and bright light. He and his Daddy will likely never be seen outside without their shades. (Side note: I have to find a matching pair of sunglasses for them . . .)
His story begins tragically, as he was abandoned at approximately 1 year of age, but he has already seen bright blessings in his little life. At about 2 years of age, he was able to go to a group center for children who are visually impaired. The development manager of that center emailed us today with several photos and LOTS of precious information about our son!! We have been wondering about his eye color, because children with albinism often have very light eyes. There are some folks with albinism that have brown eyes however, and since Oliver is Asian, that was a possibility, too. Today we know he has beautiful violet-blue eyes! The center he is in seems to be incredible. They work very hard to help visually impaired children learn how to function in the world around them. We have learned that in China if you are visually impaired, it's thought the only occupation you can have is a masseuse or masseur! He is in an English immersion class, so he will know quite a bit when he comes home. He has a teacher who has been with him the past 9 months. She is actually preparing to leave the center because she is a volunteer, but she is preparing a report for us to tell all about him, and has some of his artwork and more photos to give us!!
More crazy cool info - his group home is out in the country on a farm! Will he feel at home with the Hudson's or what?! And, when he moved to the group center in 2012, another little boy went with him from the same orphanage. They have been together for a long time, sharing a room and preschool together. The little boy is 2 1/2, so how wonderful is it that Oliver will have an Asian brother here at home that is the same age as his "brother" in China? We pray it is helpful for Oliver's transition.
He is potty trained, likes sweet foods, and apparently is a little ladies' man!! They say he throws dramatic tantrums (this oughtta be interesting - we are still pretty sure no child can out-do Freddy's tantrums :), but is usually embarrassed when he's done.
On our side of the story, it is fantastic to see God's hand in this process. We thought we would be bringing home a girl, and albinism was not even on our approved special needs list. Yet God led the events to bring us to Oliver's photo, and He brought us back to request Oliver's file even though we were hesitant about albinism, and He was with us while we researched albinism for over a month. Our hearts are overflowing with gratitude and we are in awe at what God has done in our lives. Every time in our lives when we say "I can't", God reveals His majesty and grace and beauty in showing us that "HE Can"!! Thank you God for your patience through our hesitancy, our selfishness, stubbornness, lack of confidence, lack of faith, etc.!! If you had told us last year that we would be adopting our fourth child who would be a BOY with a SPECIAL NEED, we would have laughed at you! If you had said we would be ELATED and GRATEFUL, we would have thought you had gone crazy!! Yet here we are! We are in the 2nd of 4 stages: immigration. We are asking the US government to approve us to bring a child into America for the purposes of adoption. This part will take about 2 more months, then we'll be in stage 3, dossier submission. After that, we might even get to Skype with our baby!
This song running through my head: 'GOD IS GOOD, ALL THE TIME, HE PUT A SONG OF PRAISE IN THIS HEART OF MINE, GOD IS GOOD, ALL THE TIME, THROUGH THE DARKEST NIGHTS HIS LIGHT WILL SHINE, GOD IS GOOD, GOD IS GOOD, ALL THE TIME.'
HUGE smiles!!!
