Happy Anniversary!

Here is our little girl as I layed eyes on her for the very first time. As I looked at her I had a complete peace that this was indeed our daughter. But, the next month would be full of questions and confirmations.

Just gettting to the point of looking at this picture was quite an accomplishment. We had grown very frustrated with our adoption process. We had waited far longer than we had ever expected to wait for a "waiting child." Our request was for a little girl age 3 to 5 years old, we were open to many special needs. Just like Eli was not our 1st referral, neither was our Adalynn..in both cases they were number 4!

I will remember the day I got "The Call". It was our 15th Wedding Anniversary, June 21. The kids and I were getting ready to go swim at a friends house. When my cell phone rang, I wasn't totally surprised to see the adoption agency number on the ID. I knew that they were expecting a large number of agency specific child referrals. Our case worker told us that they wanted to discuss a baby girl with us, that didn't quite meet our description. She gave me a brief overview of the child and shared that her age was 14 months.  Realizing that we had requested an older child, they would not allow us to review her file until we agreed to change our age request. She was giving us until Friday morning. I called Matt at work, ad he said "No she is a baby, we aren't adopting a baby." I shared how perfect this little girl seemed for our family, but, agreed she was really young.

God was changing my heart regarding age, but, seemed to not be having any effect on Matt. I called the agency and got a little more information, and asked for an extension. A dear friend, who is also adopting from China, said " What an odd predicament, Only you guys would have this dilemma, a child too young..."..Our agency agreed to let us have until Monday morning. You would think we would have discussed it all weekend. WE DID NOT! I was tempted to nag my husband, and probably would have had it not been for the advice from an adoptive mom friend. Here is is a good lesson for all of us nagging wives..."My other suggestion would be to take Matt's lead. While it is hard to know God's plan in some areas, in this area it is not. "Wives Submit to your husbands..." Eph 5:22, she adds, "I know that you will find peace in obedience."  OUCH! But, on second thought, I didn't have to be in charge, the OUCH is for Matt. I told Matt about this, and he said, "Well that's a lot of pressure on me don't you think?" He wasn't really liking the idea. Hum? Yeah, pressure for him, peace for me..I liked that deal.

Monday morning, at 8:58 he sent the email saying, "Call the agency and get her file. I can't believe we are going to have a baby! "