journey of joy: Happy Gotcha Day! 4 years?!

Joyah’s “Gotcha Day” was 4 years ago already?!

March 23, 2014, was the appointed day that we would be in China to officially meet and forever welcome Joyah Mi Ni into our family. So many emotions surround that day as we were anxious to meet and love the child God had prepared for our family. We prayed for this child before we even knew who she was but God knew her from the beginning.

Before we traveled to China we had received some medical information that made it unclear as to whether Joyah would ever be capable of walking, talking or doing much. It wasn’t until after getting her home from China that we started to realize that God is the only explanation for why she is doing what she is doing. Many doctors have told us that there is no explainable reason why she is capable of doing anything. Well, my friends, she walking, she’s running, she talks non-stop! God is the reason!

Joyah will continue to have many physical difficulties in life but this child is doing so many things! Thanks to the help of growth hormone, she has grown from size 2T in July 2016 to size 5T by May of 2017. She is now wearing size 5/6-right up with her peers! She does amazingly well with vision in only one eye and is writing her name. She is excited to start Kindergarten in the fall!

Thinking about how far we’ve come emotionally with her also brings a tear to my eye. Because Joyah has a traumatic past, she suffers from attachment disorder. I was so ready to love and nurture her when we traveled to bring her home but she was not ok with it. I was not prepared for her to spit food at me and scream as if I was killing her when trying to hold or rock her. This went on for over the first year after coming home as well as a horrendous sleep pattern. To this day, she will try to ruin her own fun and do things like refuse to eat ice cream that she really wants all because she doesn’t understand trust and love. She didn’t get nurtured early in infancy as she was in critical hospital care and all her first touches were painful. I’ve come to understand the reasons for her behavior which makes it easier to handle on a logical level but emotionally it’s draining on a daily basis.

Over the past 3 years, after realizing I needed to be a permanent stay-at-home mom to her, we have seen improvements that we are so thankful for. She is hugging and kissing more often and she isn’t usually screaming to get away from being rocked and sang to. When picking her up from Sunday School, she is usually happy to see us come back. The improvements are many although the hurdles still remain.

God is ever faithful and I am more thankful for the "little things" because of Joyah. If life with Joyah had been what I imagined before adopting her, I would have missed the lessons that God has taught me. Real love is loving someone who isn’t always loveable. Real love is God giving up his “One and Only Son”. Real love is working through the tough stuff for the sake of another. God never gives up on Us! He is molding me into a new creation and that would have never happened without the blessing of my daughter.

Joyah Mi Ni! We will forever love you! Happy Gotcha Day 4 years!!