Audrey's "Finding Ad"

We believe this is Audrey's Finding Ad. In China, each abandoned baby's picture is published in a local newspaper with the date she was found. Her gender is listed, we haven't begun to interpret the other characters. I am certain they say, destined to be loved!

Audrey would be the little girl on the left, date of her finding we know was 9/05/2006, so the dates seem to match and the picture is not too foreign from the one you see posted on the front of our site.. Since we learned about her birthday--8/21/06--every significant day for her, is a day we wonder where we were, what we were doing. We always knew these dates would have a certain randomness too them...we keep searching for those little signs that tell us we were always destined for her. We believe we are as destined as we were for our 4 older children.

Any number of infinite possibilities exist when you bring a baby into this world. For us the process of adoption is no different. We know God had something to do with our first 4 blessings--the miracle that is birth, but it isn't predetermined, nature runs its course at conception and you have the baby you have. There are a lot of deterministic things posted on the blogs, chats and email strings of adoptive parents..."in God's time, in Him every time the wind changes direction, and so on..." I certainly understand the sentiment, but with so much variation in people's experience...3yr waits or 6mos waits, 4 week LOAs or 4 month turnarounds, 2month waits for Special Needs or 12month waits, a perfect file or a file w/ one missing item, smooth sailing or lost files or files stuck in adoption purgatory, it's hard to accept that this is somehow more than just human beings managing a bureaucracy bigger than they are. The US gov't, the Chinese gov't, the AWAA..forms, rules, mailings, signatures, process upon process all add up to a wildly random set of possible circumstances that could either benefit or punish the anxious adoptive parent. I see no good reason after learning of our daughter in June, why we should still be waiting for our travel date 5 mos later. I thank God every day for the blessings he has bestowed, I ask the Blessed Mother for patience and the Holy Spirit for the will to act more Christ-like in my everyday words, thoughts and deeds. I try not to blame him for every micro event and every once in awhile i act on those prayers and my life is always better for it. It's a team effort, God betting on me, that i will find the right way to live, and me assuming that it isn't so random that i can't make a few things happen bc well....i want too.