29 June 2015

Stars and Water

Those are the names I will call our daughters until I can show you their names and faces. Stars and Water. They live in Uganda, that country I just can't shake, no matter what. I can't tell you much about them but that they are related and between our sons' ages (so yes, we'll have 4 kids 3.5 years apart. It's gonna be a lot of fun and quite a bit of work).

I'd love to say I'm cautiously optimistic, but I'm not. I'm vacillating between wildly excited and terrified. So much needs to happen in so little time and SO MANY THINGS can go wrong. When I told my mom we had accepted their referral, she said, "Finally! Aren't you relieved?" and I said NO! I'll be relieved when we touch down in Houston with them in our arms.

Until then, until then feels like the gantlet. I hope I won't, but I may struggle with anxiety until then. I catch myself begging God, as if He likes to withhold good things from me, or keep children out of families.

If you'd like to pray for us, I'd love some prayer for more faith, more hope. If everything goes well, we could bring them home by Christmas. But 50 different things could go wrong, delaying or destroying our adoption plans. Please pray everything about our adoption would go according to his plans -- that nothing from the enemy can stand in the way. That we'll raise the funds. That paperwork will work for us and not against us. That the judges and officials will be favorable to us. That we will celebrate Christmas as a family of six.

25 June 2015

Sad News

I've actually known this "news" for at least six weeks, and most of you may already know this, but we are not actually eligible to adopt from China. We will not meet their net worth requirements. This was missed during our paperwork because we were deciding on whether to sell the house at the same time that we were deciding to adopt.

China requires a net worth of $80,000. We don't come close.

It was a hard blow to my heart. I had a lot of hope that, through adopting from China, we would be able to cross our t's and dot our i's and end up with a daughter on the other side of time & paperwork. I hoped to bring home that sweet little Treasure. I have cried and prayed and finally felt peace that, like the precious girl we weren't supposed to adopt last fall, we aren't able to because God has a different family marked out for her. I am honored to share a teeny piece of God's heart by loving these kiddos and praying for what's best for them, not just what I want.

We are proceeding in a different direction that I hope to be able to tell you all about soon. This is our last "go" of adopting, so I'm praying and preaching hope to myself that the past three and a half years of struggle has been leading up to this situation. To our beautiful, precious little daughters. #spoileralert