How do you protect your heart?

We are finally number one on our agencies waiting for a referral list! What an amazing feeling when we heard the director of our agency tell us this! She told us since the end of August that there is a little girl in an orphanage in Ethiopia that is meant to be ours!  We were just waiting on medicals and paperwork to be cleared so she can legally give us all the information and pictures of this beautiful girl!  We were so relieved to hear that our future daughter  was in an orphanage where she was getting food in her belly and has clothes on her back.  Finally, we are in the last part of waiting before we can see her precious face!

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After three months of patiently waiting to see her precious face, we called the director again to see what is going on.  We have heard that UNICEF was in the region that she if from, and is almost stopping the process while they are there.  We lost our referral.  The one that was meant to be ours (or so we thought).  Our hearts hit the flour, our emotions were/are raw and ugly, but real.  Real pain for this baby who we had absolutely no information and haven't seen, except the peace in our hearts that she was alive & safe.  UNICEF took her from the "safe" environment of the orphanage to find her a "foster home" in Ethiopia.  Yes, apparently they have a right to do this.  So now what?!? We wait some more, while mourning the loss of the baby that we have grown to love but never have seen.  Luckily, we have not told the girls, we were waiting for pictures since they would have wanted to see her beautiful face.  

We were warned that we need to protect our three daughters and ourselves, by telling the girls nothing and basically only telling a few select people once we get a referral because of this situation.  The UNICEF organization is able to take the children out of the orphanage, even after they have been referred to a family that would love and care for them forever.  We have been warned to not get attached to the little face in the pictures because this is happening more frequently.  This is the reality of adopting from Ethiopia.  We have to decide if we can protect our hearts, because if we can't handle it the only option is to back out now.  How do you not get attached?  How do you keep it a secret from family & friends when the moment you've waited for for over a year has finally arrived?  How do you not make this personal?  We do not have an answer for this, but I guess we will find out since we are not giving up.  We are praying for the referral we lost, and that our future referral is not taken from us.  Yes, ladies and gentleman we live in a messed up world.