My 6th grader and I started a new book in homeschool today: Daughter of the Mountains by Louise Rankin. So far, all I know from chapter 1, is that it's about a girl growing up in Tibet, in the Himalayas.
I couldn't get through the first chapter without tears falling. The image of the main character makes me miss the daughter we never met.
If you've followed our adoption story over the years, you know what we limped through: a country shutdown. There are more recent developments to the story to add, though, and I think this update will be worth the read.
We worked on our paperwork for 9 months, then got stuck in a holding pattern for 4 months while the Nepal government was in flux, and then our dossier went off to Kathmandu and we were finally, officially waiting for our daughter… in Nepal. We were family number 74 to be matched to a child -- only 73 families ahead of us. It could have happened any day, literally! Instead, while visiting family in Chicago, we got the call that knocked the wind out of us.
The US State Department, in all it's wisdom, shut down the Nepal adoption program on allegations, taken from dated UNICEF reports, that the Nepal adoption program was corrupt. Our adoption agency called to tell us that our dream of a Nepali daughter was over.
We lost a year of paperwork, blood (yes, literally - we had physicals and lots of blood work), sweat, tears and prayers, not to mention $12,000.
We were never to know a brown skinned, brown eyed, dark haired Nepali girl in our home.
Devastation. Suffocating grief.
We waited for a month or two, per our agency's suggestion, with hopes that Nepal would re-open. It did not. We nervously, prayerfully, picked ourselves up, brushed ourselves off, cleaned our wounds and started over again with China Special Needs.
Fast forward to last year. We had our China girl home, our lives were settling into Texas. I received word through an organization called Both Ends Burning that investigations led them to believe the USDOS made a known, horrible mistake and that the organization was going to do something about the Nepal shutdown. I was invited to a series of conference calls with the organization and other Nepal families. What I learned reopened old scars.
I learned that those families who had been matched with Nepali children at the time of the shutdown were able to bring them home. It cost them thousands of dollars more and an agonizing amount of time. I can't remember the number of families, but it was somewhere in the 80's. Hang onto your hat for this next sentence, the one that makes me want to move out of this country of ours:
In all cases, international attorneys were able to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Nepal adoption program was above reproach, that the children were indeed true orphans, that no bribery existed, that the entire program was on the up and up, completely legal. In… every... case! And the USDOS knew it! Our government is to blame for our loss, for our heartache, for our lost dream. Our government is responsible for removing hope from a child crying out for love of a forever family.
It still makes me sick to my stomach.
You can say that it just wasn't God's plan. You can say that we weren't supposed to have a Nepali daughter. You can say that we now have the daughter we are supposed to have. But those words aren't helpful, friends… ever. God sets the lonely in families. The Nepal shutdown was the work of evil, the work of an evil force that will stop at nothing to keep the lonely living without love and care, without family.
How can I possibly miss a daughter I never knew?
Don't question it. I miss her. I have a bracelet from Nepal that I bought for her through Tiny Hands International, an organization that serves and brings love and hope and the Gospel to the street children and trafficked children of Nepal. I intended to give that bracelet to our Quiet Tiger once she came home, but I couldn't. It simply doesn't belong to her. It belongs to my lost Nepali daughter.
The daughter we never met.
