The Girls: THEN & NOW

I feel like I have to take a deep breath before I begin this post . . . for reasons I can't really put words to right now. Maybe by the end of the post I'll have some words to describe my feelings. 

I'm posting the girls' "then" pictures together because we received many pictures of them together, they are always together and well, its just hard to think of one of them without the other. :) 

August 2010 - Claire's referral picutre

This is the picture that is hardest for me to look at/think about/process. I think you will agree that it looks nothing like the Claire we know now. NOTHING. When we received her referral picture the agency said she was 5 1/2 years old. We knew she was probably a little older than that. It is insane to think that she was probably really around 10 years old at that time. Obviously, she was very malnurished.

We received this picture a little later.

This is the referral picture we received of Zoe, saying she was six years old. 

She looked about the size of our niece, Mya, who was six years old at that time, too. So, six years old seemed pretty reasonable. (Even though we had in mind to adopt two girls between 3- 5 years old. Ha! God's plans are so not our plans . . . and I'm thankful for that!)

November 2010

Claire

The girls are both wearing clothes we sent them and I am fairly sure they are both size 6 shirts. SIZE SIX! And look at Claire. She looks fairly young in this picture (almost younger than in her referral pictures). She looks like she could be six years old in this picture.

Here is the astounding part: one year later, November 2011 (home for a month), Claire was (and is) wearing size FOURTEEN. I'm not lying, people! Size FOURTEEN. Most of her size 14 clothes are getting to small as I type this. And she wears women's size 6.5 shoes! I think this is part of what makes her referral picture hard to look at . . . now knowing {about} how old she really is and how young she looks in her first pictures. (My best guess currently is that Claire is at least 12 years old and Zoe 10 now. But we still say 10 and 8 because the girls both talk about Claire being 10 and Zoe being 8. We'll have to cross that bridge later.)

Zoe

December 2010
Claire, looking more malnourished than in her referral picture. Perhaps she grew taller for a bit.

Zoe

January 2011
Claire

Zoe

February 2011

This was the first picture we received of the kids TOGETHER and something about seeing them together made them finally begin to feel like my children. 

April 2011
I LOVED seeing the girls together, interacting in this picture. 

And I disticntly remember thinking Claire's hand looked like the size of an adult hand. I wasn't sure if something was making it look out of proportion or not, but now I know that it was an accurate thought. I've already mentioned in a previous post that her hands are the same size as mine!

Claire

Zoe

May 2011
One of my favorite pictures EVER of the girls together.

Claire

Zoe

July 2011
It was fun to see another picture of them all together.

September 2011 

(The last pictures we received, 1-2 months before they came home)

Claire

At this point I realized all of the size 7-8 clothes I had for Claire were not going to be big enough so I reorganized their dresser (for probably the 5th time since we had received their referral pictures) to include size 10-12 for her. 

Zoe

Before I do the "then" and "now" comparison pictures, I want to share something pretty amazing God allowed us to receive. Over a month ago I became friends on Facebook with the mom of a boy adopted from C who our girls know. Shortly after, this woman said she was looking at a blog that has pictures from an orphanage in C a couple years ago and she came across this picture that she thought looked like our daughter. My heart started beating faster as I clicked my way to the picture:

When I saw it (and by the way that is not Isaiah that Zoe is holding) my stomach sunk, I wept and then I almost had to gasp for air. To see a picture of my daughter, who I had come to know and love - in a  "normal" day in her former life was something that can't be described in words. Once I gathered myself, I realized what a priceless treasure it was to get one more tiny piece of her life before she came to us - even as hard as it was to think about (some orphanages in C are good and some are bad . . . our girls' orphanage was not good). The picture must not have been taken too long before we were matched with Zoe because she looks similar size in her referral picture.

Which leads me to THEN:

And NOW:

I think what is so hard for me about seeing the girls and thinking about them before we were matched with them isn't - surprisingly - so much about all they have endured (because I am reminded of that daily when I see their survival behaviors). What kills me and makes me weep even as I type is this: 

What about all the others like them who haven't yet been taken care of by a family or adopted into a family? 

The girls' referral pictures represent the millions of orphans in the world. But, I now know those {former}orphans personally. I know their personalities, I know how they like to wear their hair, I know if they like ice in their water or not, I know how they laugh and I know what makes them cry. I know them.

143 million orphans are longing for just even one person to know them . . . so they can ultimately know that Jesus knows them. 

The fact that there are three less orphans in the world is something to praise God for to be sure. But, Jason and I have talked a number of times since the kids have come home about how adopting three orphans surprisingly does not make us feel like we have done anything to "help." It doesn't satisfy the God-given longing to care for orphans. Instead, it has only allowed us to be more aware of  and see deeper into the hearts of hurting, lonely and hungry children. 

I guess those are the words to describe what looking at the girls' "then" and "now" pictures is like.