Learning to TRUST

 It had been a year since my second miscarriage. The loss of our baby, once again unexplained, at 12 weeks. Between these losses we had been blessed by the miracle of giving birth to a perfect healthy baby girl. But even that pregnancy had been stressful. At our first ultrasound we were told that this baby had a fifty percent chance of surviving. For us, pregnancy was stressful. My heart was fragile, I didn't feel like I had it in me to potentially experience this kind of loss again. But there we were, with a three year old whom we wanted to have a sibling, trying to decide whether to allow our hearts to possibly be broken once again or to raise an only child.  We prayed a lot. We knew our experience was not uncommon, but we also knew how painful it had been for us. Then one night, I began to get a glimpse of what God had in store for us. As I laid in bed, tossing and turning, worrying and praying I heard God speak to my heart. "Why not adopt?" I sat up. The thought was so loud and so clear it was as if someone had spoken the words out loud in my bedroom. That night was the first step in this amazing journey. God planted a seed in my heart that I could not ignore. It took a year, to really process the thought, and the commitment, and to begin to develop the trust that was needed to take that leap of faith into the adoption world. One year ago, this story officially began to unfold and I am learning that its when we step out in faith to follow God's plan we can never, in a million years, even dream up what He has in store for us. Last month, we thought we had it all figured out. We were given what felt like such a sure sign about our little boy. We accepted his referral, we paid the next set of fees and now we just wait for him to pass court so we can start planning our trip to bring him home. But last week we learned more about our sweet little boy, Dauphin. We learned that he is the oldest of 3 children. He is 4, turning 5 in May and he has 3 year old twin siblings...we were told the twins would be staying together but had been referred to a different family. I was heartbroken.  We never, ever, wanted to be a part of splitting up siblings and our agency had known this from the beginning. Prayerfully we told them that if the other family would consider accepting Dauphin, we would let his referral go if it meant keeping the children together. At 11:45 at night, I received an email. This email, left us frozen and in shock. There was no "other family"... The twins had not been referred and if we were interested we could consider taking them along with Dauphin...Seriously, God must have a sense of humor! I have one, quite self sufficient 5 year old. We're adopting an almost 5 year old...we had it all figured out..really?... We said we would be interested and asked for pictures and more information about the little ones. Once again, I feel God saying "Trust Me". Dauphin's little brother is also wearing a t-shirt that my friend recognized as one of her son's from the donation made last fall. God reminded us that this whole adoption idea was His in the first place. We are here because of our willingness to trust. We feel a connection to little Dauphin because we feel like God led us right to him. And now, we also feel a connection to his little siblings. Maybe we have been placed right where we are to fight for these kids who can not fight for themselves. They sit together at an orphanage, together, with no voice. We are their voice and we will trust.

Last week after learning about the twins, but having not shared this with Emmaline, I asked her if she was getting excited about her brother. She replied, "yes mommy, but I REALLY wanted a sister" she went on to say, "you know what would be perfect, if Jesus gave me 2 brothers and a sister, that way we would have 2 girls and 2 boys"... The twins are a little boy and a little girl. Sweet Emmaline, it looks like God is answering your prayers. We plan to do everything we can to bring all 3 of these sweet children home, together. When I ended my last blog post with "greater things are yet to come" I had no idea!

So, where does this leave us now? We have an amazing caseworker locally who has already updated our homestudy for us to include approval for adopting 3 children and she has sent the needed paperwork on to USCIS to update our I600a. This should hopefully be processed in the next 4-6 weeks. Since our homestudy has already been updated our agency sent us the official referral for the twins last Thursday! This means we have 2 weeks to gather the needed documents to accept and make another payment for their referral fee. This is where we take a huge leap of faith. We thought we were so on track financially (thanks to so many of you who have generously made donations), but now we owe $13,000 more, in 2 weeks...so...if you have ever felt the urge to make a tax deductible donation to our adoption fund, now is the time! Details of how to do this can be found under the "support us" tab. We've been trying to think of more fund raisers to do and this definitely puts it into high gear for us. If anyone has any fundraising ideas, please share them with me! So, here we are...feeling like we are crazy to accept all three and even more crazy if we don't! We truly feel like God has big things in store for us and for these kids. We know we will be so blessed to have them in our lives. Thanks for being a part of this adventure with us!

Here's a song I want to share. I heard it and really listened to the lyrics for the first time the day before we learned about the twins.  It has become my favorite song since learning about them. It makes me so excited to know we are really doing something to make a difference!

Listen to the song here:  Kings and Queens