Overwhelmed with God's Blessings

I was given this verse yesterday:

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us." (Ephesians 3:20)

This speaks volumes to how I've been feeling lately. I have much to be thankful for - an overwhelming peace, the privilege to prepare for a new son, renewed strength - just to name a few. I have been given more than I ever imagined receiving. Life comes with challenges but in "all things, God does work for the good of those who love him."

Happy Mother's Day!

This morning Steve made breakfast for the family and during our prayer time I was reminded of how this Mother's Day is extra special for me. Today I celebrate motherhood and the privilege of raising my 3 daughters along with the blessing of adding a son to our family soon.

The reality of having a son is finally sinking in after the flurries of activities that came last week with our referral. I'm starting to come down from the cloud. Now I know my son's story and I have a sweet face to remind me that this is real - yes - I really do have a son.

Last night, when I tucked our two youngest girls in, I thought about our son and for the first time, I thought about who might be tucking him in each night. I have heard amazing things about the care in his orphanage so I'm not concerned about his safety and I know he is getting a lot of love from the nannies. But right now he doesn't have the physical love of a parent.

Although I feel overly blessed this Mother's Day, receiving the gift of a son at such a time as this, makes my heart ache over another mother's loss of her child.

Steve and I have decided not to share his story at this time but I will say that our son does have a birth family who loves him. No doubt they are grieving over the loss of this precious family member. If I'm wondering who's tucking him in at night, they certainly are wondering as well. They are the only family he knows and that knows him. They know what comforts him when he is sad. They know how to put him down at night. They know how to communicate with him. Up until April 16th, the day he was relinquished to the orphanage, they took care of his every need.

Today, I do not know him like his birth family knows him. I admire their strength and their will to seek a better life for their son. Making the decision to give your child a better shot at life, without your child being part of your life, is a love almost too incomprehensible.

We hope to meet his birth family when we travel to Ethiopia. I don't know what they will think of their son's new family but until we meet them, I pray that they will feel an overwhelming peace about their son's future. May God give them the reassurance and comfort they need to as they grieve their loss.

I don't even know what more to say other than God, thank you for the privilege to be a mother to your children. Even though he doesn't have a parent to tuck him in at night, may he still feel the hug and the love of his Heavenly Father.

Accepting our referral!!!

For those who are intrigued with the mystical sides of life, this post is for you....

Yesterday, May 5th, we accepted the referral for our son.

Several months ago, I had a strong feeling that there was going to be something important about May 5th. For a while, I was hoping it would be the day we meet our son but as the months passed, that became less of a reality.

I felt weird about telling Steve that I think our referral is going to come on May 5th. At the time I was hoping we would not have to wait that long but I still had a strong feeling that we would wait that long.

More time passed and then we received a referral on April 6th. I was confused and decided that May 5th was just something I dreamed up.

Then we lost our April 6th referral. Soon after, out of the blue, Olivia asked me what was going on May 5th. She said May 5th has been on her mind and for some reason she thinks it is going to be a special day. I shared this with Steve and Olivia had expressed this with him as well.

Last week, we received a call from our specialists and her exact words were, "I would be very surprised if you receive a referral in May". She wanted us to prepare for a June referral.

Monday, May 4th, we received our referral. We were very surprised since 2 business days before that, we were told we would not get a May referral. On May 5th, yesterday, we had complete peace that this is our son. We accepted the referral on May 5th.

I know this is not a coincidence. This confirmed God's hand in this adoption. He gave me the date we would claim our son.

Now we wait for news of our court date. We hope to still travel this summer sometime, most likely August.

REFERRAL!!!

Our social worker called Monday (May 4th) at 3:00 p.m. with a referral for a 2 year, 3 month old boy. His name is Yihun and it means "let it be". She forwarded us an email with his file and I tried calling Steve's cell phone 3 times in a row but he never answered. I also tried calling his work (which I never call) and I got to the directory but kept pushing the wrong buttons on the phone and could never get to him. I finally called his cell phone one last time and left him a message to call me. What seemed like an eternity later, he called and I told him the news. Apparently he didn't feel his phone ringing.

Yihum is very handsome. He has very large eyes, round face and is healthy. We noticed and others have made comments as well that he shares similar features with our daughters Lauren and Avery. In other words, he looks like our family. He's defiantly our son.

I can't even put into words the feelings and emotions that have been going through our family this week. We are over the moon with excitement, exhausted, overwhelmed and joyful, just to name a few.

As our family celebrates our new son, we also think about his birth family, their loss of a son and his loss of the only family he ever knew. So, you can imagine how we can cry out of joy one minute and cry out of sadness the next. Like, I mentioned, words can't even begin to describe the emotions.

Drawn from Water

I just stumbled upon this organization a few days ago. In Africa there is a tribe that believes in superstition and they kill children when they are considered to be taboo to the community. For one, if a child's front teeth come in before their bottom teeth, they will kill that child.

The Drawn from Water ministry rescued the first children from this 200 year cultural practice. They have set up an orphanage for these children and plan to continue rescues. There is a family from CA who is moving there in 4 weeks to run the orphanage for one year.

Since this is a very new ministry, which began in January 2009, they have a lot of needs. Please check out the website and consider helping in any way you can.

HaPPy BirTHdaY AVERY!!!!

Our sweet Avery is SIX today!!

Just a few facts about our girl:

• She has a smile permanently planted on her face about 95% of the time, even when she is sleeping!
• She loves music and would play CDs all day long if she could. She will try to play songs by ear on the piano.
• She gets carried around a lot! All she has to do is raise her arms in the air and there is always someone who can't resist picking her up.
• She has a beautiful voice and loves to sing!
• She is easy going and easy to please.
• She loves posing for pictures.
• She remembers people's names, their siblings, parents and last names too. We will be sitting in church, someone will walk in and she will say, there is so and so. I barely know so and so! Her memory amazes me. After the first few weeks of school, she could name the first and last names of each child in her class.
• She loves to snuggle, hug and kiss!
• She is a girly girl. She loves to dress up, wear makeup, jewelry and hair accessories.
• She gets mommy all to herself on Tuesdays. She loves to put puzzles together, help with laundry, help in the kitchen and play outside.
• On Thursdays, while mommy is at Bible Study, she gets time with her Grandparent's where she will play store, dress up and make cookies.
• She knows how to get what she wants. There is something about her sweet personality that is so irresistable.
  

Funny stories:

Yesterday during the girls' violin lessons, I sent Avery and Olivia to den of our teacher's house to read a book. When I went to retrieve Olivia for her lesson, they were watching TV. It was on a commercial and Olivia jumped up and turned it off. Avery asked to turn it back on because she was right in the middle of a show. I asked what show she was watching and she said, she was watching the Dr Phil show! She said, "it is really good mommy - he's talking about people on drugs and stuff like that." Huh!!??! I thought, Oh no!! My baby now knows about drugs!!!" I of course had a little talk with both Olivia and Avery.

She loves American Idol (a family favorite) and offers her opinions. She will make comments like, "Paula, get some clothes on!" "Danny's on, shh, I want to hear him." "Adam has fingernail polish on?! Huh?!" Oh, by the way, she knows each judge and contestant by name. I can never remember the new judge's name but she could tell you.

Today Avery brought cookies to school. She told me that she had enough extras to give to all the teachers in the school. But she didn't give any to the janitor or the cooks because their hands are too dirty.

Difficult week.....

This should be a post telling you our exciting news about our referral. We did get a referral this week. The call came on Monday just before 4:00 p.m. We celebrated for a couple days. We were thrilled to finally after all this time to have a referral. However, yesterday morning we received devastating news and it became clear that this child will not be joining our family after all.

This has been a great loss to our entire family. This is the worst loss we have ever experienced as a family. We are grieving. This is painful.

We had pictures of this sweet child. The girls each brought pictures to school to show their friends. Steve left for work one morning this week with his picture in his hands, like a proud father to a new son. We thought this was our son and brother. We began making plans for him. His picture still hangs on our refrigerator. We studied each part of his body from the top of his head down to his cute little feet.

I started to have visions of watching him go down the slide, taking a stroll around the neighborhood, running in the back yard, playing with the neighbor kids.

Then we got the news yesterday. We were not willing to give up at first. Maybe there was a mistake. We held out hope through a heart wrenching day utnil late last night when it became very clear.

We have been waiting for a very long time for this referral. I don't know why God put us through this experience. Why did we have to suffer so much? Why did my girls have to learn about this kind of loss and suffering?

Through this experience, I learned how weak I really am. I kept thinking about the verse when Jesus says, "when you love the least of these, you love me too." I was so confused.

Now, in the midst of grief and suffering, I'm starting to understand why. I am weak, that is true. But God strengthens us through our weakness. It's hard to see the joy in this experience but I know that God is using this experience to prepare us even more. God will reveal his perfect plan for our adoption, when the joy of all this will come. But for now, we are overwhelmed with sadness.

We may bring our girls to Ethiopia

Steve and I have talked quite seriously lately about bringing the girls on our trip to Ethiopia. When we first started the process, we had not planned to bring them. We thought that if they didn't come, we could focus more on our new son.

We started to change our minds when our oldest, Lauren asked if she could come along. I never imagined any of the girls wanting to go with having to get shots and all.

Then, it dawned on me that they will have to get some of the same shots anyway even if they stay home. This was news that wasn't very well welcomed by the girls by the way. But we already have survived the first Hep A shot, so they will survive the rest as well.

We are thinking how neat it would be to have our whole family experience this part of the journey together. I want our girls to see where their brother was born, the sights and smells and flavors of his culture. Stepping foot in the birthplace of their brother's country is not the same as reading about it in a book or looking at pictures.

Also, I have read that including the entire family on the trip is good for attachment. If the girls don't come, there will be one extra attachment step to encounter when we return home.

I would like to bring the girls along regardless but it does depend on a couple things. For one, financially this would be a stretch for us. It would cost us up to $6,000 more in airline tickets alone. But then again, I can't think of any better time for my girls to go. So, regardless of the extra cost, we could just bite the bullet and make it work.

Secondly, I don't care to pull the girls out of school for 2 weeks. Our decision to bring them will be much easier if we are able to travel this summer. In order to travel before September however, we would have to receive our referral very soon.

Despite a few challenges, today we are leaning even more strongly towards bringing them after a phone conversation I had with a friend. After being out of town all weekend, I returned home with a phone message from a friend who is a missionary in China. She was visiting in our area for a short time. She is an amazing woman who has so many interesting experiences to share. I admire and trust her wisdom. Our conversation quickly went by and lasted for one hour!

Anyway, I told her about our thoughts of bringing the girls. She said, "if you can do it, bring them." And then she recalled a time talking to a girl from China who was adopted by Americans. This American family brought their entire family to China when they picked up their daughter. The little girl told my friend with a big smile on her face that "her whole family came to get her." My friend said, "how neat it would be if your son could say that and how much that would mean to him."

I told my friend that her story brought tears to my eyes and she said it brought tears to her eyes too.

I was convinced. Now, we need to pray for confirmation from God.