Older Child Adoption

I would like to spend a few minutes talking about older child adoption. Last fall, when I was starting to feel the pull to adopt again I spent alot of time looking for a baby that was younger then Alenna. I was hoping to find a baby that was around a year old or younger. I brought the information about several babies to Tim hoping that he would feel that one of them was our new daughter. He never did. At the same time the Lord was using several different things in my life to help me open my heart to an older child. Not to long later Arianna became available. When I showed her information to Tim he told me that he would consider it. After much prayer we decided to adopt her. Even though she was completely different then what I thought I wanted for a fifth child I couldn't be happier. But, I do want to talk about some of my reasons why I was so hesitate to adopt an older child and why I now feel so strongly about older child adoption.
One of our biggest fears were that she would not want to be adopted. We were afraid that we would go through the whole process, get to China and find out that she didn't want a family. Another fear was that we would not be able to understand her and that she could not understand us. I also wondered whether she would accept our religious beliefs. I also had to consider how I would feel knowing that we had missed out on so much of her life, and the fact that we probably would not have any pictures of when she was a baby or younger child. On top of all that, there was the issue of attachment. Will she attach to us, or will we be just another caregiver for her? These were all very real fears for us and things that we had to consider and work through. In spite of these fears we took the step of faith to adopt an older child. Now that we are so close to bringing her home I can see how the Lord has worked to calm our fears and show us that it is OK. I know from the bottom of my heart that we will be so blessed that we decided to have faith in where the Lord was leading us. One of the ways that the Lord has shown us that this is right, is that our biggest fear was that she would not want to be adopted. Through the contact of Arianna's best friends family and the person that sent us pictures this week, I can say with assurance that she does want to be adopted and is very excited about her new family. The person that sent me the pictures from this week had this to say about her" Her eyes tell the story" Finally I have someone to love me, finally someone has chosen me". Those words are so precious to me. I truly can't imagine what it would be like to be an child growing up in an orphanage seeing younger kids come in and stay for awhile and then leave for their new life with a family. It would be so hard wondering when it was their turn to be adopted and wondering why it hadn't happened yet. Every year getting older and knowing that someday time would run out and they would be too old to be adopted. My heart breaks for those whose time has run out and now they are without hope. If in reading our story, your heart is opened to the idea of adopting an older child, I hope you will. I am glad that there are so many families that are wanting to adopt babies, I think it is so important to get these kids out of the orphanages as soon as possible, but there are just as many if not more wonderful older kids who need homes and families too. And their time is swiftly running out. If anyone has questions about older child adoption, please feel free to ask me. I would be happy to answer and questions.