Why "Many Red Threads" for the name of our blog?

Almost eleven years ago my husband and I opened an email from our adoption agency, Great Wall China Adoption.  In the email was a photo of a beautiful little Chinese girl with big dark eyes and a head topped with a whisper of black hair.  My immediate thought upon seeing her beautiful face was so this is my beautiful daughter who has been tugging at my heart for nearly 18 months!   The Chinese call that tug on our hearts an invisible red thread.  

     The tug on that red thread began for me on my birthday,  January 13, 2002.  I was at my mother's house for dinner when I noticed a magazine on her coffee table called Faith Magazine.  On the cover was a Caucasian woman holding a Chinese baby.  It looked intriguing so I opened up the magazine to read the article.  As I was reading the article about how this woman adopted a child from China, I felt a very strong desire to adopt a little girl from China.  The feeling was overwhelming and brought much peace and conviction into my heart.  

    That evening I told my husband about what I felt.  I think at first he thought it was a fleeting desire and would go away after some time.  That was not the case, though.  I could not think of anything else.  I prayed about it and began to research adoptions from China.  I also contacted several adoption agencies to interview them about the Chinese adoption process and requirements.  My husband soon realized at this point that this was not fleeting and gave the "green light" to start the process.  

    After much paper work, social worker visits, doctor appointments, and jumping through many hoops we were officially waiting for our turn to be appointed a daughter from China.  And, boy did we wait.  Chinese value patience so I think they were teaching us a valuable lesson.   By May of  2003 we were expecting the phone call from our agency telling us we had a daughter, but a nasty viral respiratory disease began to emerge in Asia called SARS.  SARS had become an epidemic and many people were very ill or dying.  China decided to shut down its borders to prevent the spread of the virus, and consequently foreign adoptions would cease until the SARS could be contained.  We were devastated since we were told by our agency we were next in line.  

    Fears of how our little girl was doing began to surface.  Would she be exposed to the virus?  Was she sick right then? Did the orphanage have the means to take care of her if she did get sick?

    Finally, on July 2, 2003 the borders were opened once again, and the following day we received the phone call from our agency.   "Congratulations!  You have a healthy little girl from QinZhou Social Welfare Institute.  We are sending a file to your email with more information and her photo."  We were overjoyed and relieved she was okay.  Of course,  our luck was such that where we were had no internet to open our email, so we raced by car to the closest place we could think of that had internet-my mom's house-and opened up the email to see our daughter's sweet face.  

    On September 11, 2003 (yes, a scary day to be flying) we finally got on an airplane to China and met our daughter in person on September 14, 2003.  

     Our daughter we realized later, was conceived around the time I first saw the Faith magazine and I felt the tug in my heart in January of 2002.  To me this is a pretty strong indicator that the invisible red thread described by the Chinese is a real entity--the love of God.   And since we experience the love of God through many people we are all connected to Many Red Threads!  

     This is the story of our journey to shorten some of those red threads that were established in China eleven years ago as told by myself and my daughter, Malissa.