Off To A New Journey

Welcome to my attempt to get into the information 21st century. We are off to a new journey to get our new daughter June Lee Meixing Waters. Please join us as we start ANOTHER ride of our lives.

As most of you know, we adopted a precious little girl from China in 2003. Our sweet little daughter Mia Rose was very ill when we got her, very behind developmentally and very malnourished. I remember the first time I held her I couldnt believe that someone had just handed us a beautiful 13 month old little girl to just walk away with. We quickly took her to the hotel room to check out and it took me 12 hours to decide if she had poor muscle tone due to neglect or had cerebral palsy. We also found out she was very ill with pneumonia, double ear infections and profoundly impacted. She was unable to hear much until we had tubes put in and her first speech was much like that of a deaf child.
Fast forward to 2007 and you would have seen a gorgeous little lady who sang(off key of course), danced and fiercely loved her mom and dad and brothers. She was becoming quite the diva and I secretly smiled at that, knowing if anyone deserved to be spoiled it was her. But the best part was that she was growing in the love and understanding of Jesus Christ. I will never forget her playing Tball and the boy on first tapped her with his glove to get her out. She just stood there crying and I ran on the field to get her to go back to the dugout and just as I got there she looked at me and said "That boy doesnt have Jesus in his Heart!!! I had to laugh as I tried to explain to her that was how you play baseball and he was not just being mean. I wondered then if I was raising the church lady from Saturday Night Live sit com. She was fabulous and everything we ever dreamed of for a daughter. However, God had a different need for her in his plan. She passed away 4/17/07 in a tragic drowning accident while under the after school care of our nanny. We will never understand or have peace with her being gone. We will never stop loving her and missing her. But our only answer to this horrible situation is that we believe God looked at this sweet little girl living in an orphanage in china. He knew her days would be numbered as 4years8months6days. He knew she was too special to live them without a loving family. So he saw us dreaming of a little daughter, and knew we were strong enough to love her everyday like it would be her last, take her all over the country and other countries on trips, touch her and caress her like she was the gift she was. He knew we would be overwhelmed with the loss and grief but we were strong enough to survive and keep going. He knew we would take the loss and make as much good from it as we could. The loss does not define us as a family. We hope it show others what a belief in heaven does when you loose a loved one. We hope is show people that we are not necessarily strong, but humbled by the time we had with her. We are 2 parents with children very devoted to each other and who know how to love each other, and children brought into our family out of love.

We believe God has looked down and felt we completed our first journey well. He has blessed us with the referral of another little girl. She waits for us now in China. Her birthday is 1/2/07. She will be named June Lee Meixing Waters. June is in honor of her grandmother Doris June and me(Cynthia June). Lee is in honor of her dad Curtis Lee. Meixing is her chinese name and we do not yet have a translation. She has a repaired cleft lip and an unrepaired cleft palate. She also has an orthopedic small toe issue. We hope to travel by May to get her.

We know this new daughter will not replace Mia. We do not want to. She will forever be 4 years old in our heart, even when we are much older. But our house is empty, and we want to parent another child who may not otherwise get a chance to know what a family is. She may not know ever without us that she can be anything she wants with us at her side cheering. She may not know what it is like to have 3 brothers loving and spoiling her. But most of all, she may not know without us who Jesus Christ is. We gotta believe there are a few more first base tballers who need little girls preaching to them!

So, yes we know that Jordan is getting married 7/07 and leaving the home. Yes we know Tyler goes off to College 8/08. Yes we know Riley will soon be 11 and more independent. Yes we know we are getting old. But, we are not too old to love again. We are not too old to give one more child a chance. We are not too old to devote the next couple of decades to show the world what a child does to a family. She will bring us far more than we have to give her. And that is a wonderful thing. Follow us thru this blog on our journey!