The Beginning

Yep, this is the first post and it was a long one. However, you've got to start somewhere. I decided to spare all of you one big fat initial post that may keep you from ever wanting to look at this blog again and break it up into a few daily posts (don't get any ideas about daily posts though. I don't think our life would allow for that). I know I'm not much of a writer and can be long winded (you'll see!). I also know that what our family really wants are pictures. So, think of these first posts like the time you spend talking with a good friend over a cup of coffee about the experiences you've had while you've spent time apart. It will be long, but I hope that by the end you will feel like we've experienced the whole thing together.

Monday, April 6, 2009. The day that changed our lives forever. It was the day that the Lord would begin to intensely show us His faithfulness and His love. The beginning of the experiences that would mold us into the people that we are today.  

Nine months prior to this day Sam and I decided that we would try to pursue adoption through the foster care system. We had tried to get pregnant for a few years and it wasn't happening. We'd always been open to adoption. In fact, we had already talked about wanting to adopt later in life. But, it turns out that the Lord's plans are not always our plans (Isaiah 55:8-9). So, we went through months of training every Thursday for 3 hours, took an additional training for a concurrent placement, had a home study completed and filled out so much paperwork that one would think that the state should know how far we could spit and the number of hairs on our head. After that, we waited. And then, we waited some more. Nine months, one house purchase, and a move later our waiting was over! A sort of pregnancy you could say. 

It was around 4 pm and I had just checked my e-mail to find a note from our social worker telling me that there hadn't been any babies born into our program recently and that we should be prepared to wait even longer. I closed my computer, allowed myself to feel sad for a moment, and then went along with the unending house chores that needed my attention. As I was making my way up from the basement my phone rang. It was our worker! She said, "Sometimes part of my job is to send e-mails like the one I sent you this afternoon, but the best part of my job is to call a family and tell them about a baby waiting for them.". She had someone else on the line with her and said that she would give me more information. Here's the information we received: there was a little girl named Savannah who was 6 weeks old, was caucasian, and needed someone to take her. She was in the NICU at one of the hospitals downtown and according to the doctor she would need to continue to be there for at least 4 more weeks because she was withdrawing from "meth". Since we didn't get the call until the end of the work day they were going to allow us 24 hours to decide if we wanted to take her. 

We immediately called our close friends and asked them to pray for us. We needed wisdom. We needed the kind of wisdom that comes from above (James 1:5). We had a hard decision to make and needed the Lord's help to make it. Our hearts ached for this little girl but we didn't think we were capable of taking care of a child who was exposed to methamphetamines. The research we found online showed that some of the babies who are exposed to this drug are born with their organs on the outside of their body. There must have been some mistake. We did not have the medical training to care for a child like that. We decided to wait until the next day to try to get more information to make a decision. So, on Tuesday, April 7th we called Savannah's social worker and found out the that Savannah was actually withdrawing from methadone (a drug with a completely different set of withdrawal issues that aren't as severe) and apart from it taking her little body twice as long as normal to withdrawal she was healthy. We also found out more information about her parents and siblings and realized that more likely than not, Savannah would go back to them once they were able to care for her. Sam and I agreed that we would take her. How could we not take her? She was an helpless child who needed someone to love her. It was not her fault that she was born into the situation that she was and even if it meant only caring for her for a short time we felt like it was right. 

I kept having this same thought run through my mind over and over again, "The Lord did not choose me to be his child based on anything that I brought to him. He gave his love freely to me. He gave his love without reservation. He gave his love to me who he created." We didn't know if this little girl would ever be ours. We didn't know if she would ever know who we were. But, what we did know is that her tiny little body (all 5lb and 14oz of it) was created by the same God who created this universe and THAT was enough for me. She needed us to love her until her parents were healthy enough to love her or until the state saw fit to allow us to adopt her.


To be continued...

I'll leave you with an outtake from one of the many attempts to get a picture for the adoption announcement:

She's hiding behind the curtains about to jump out and say "Boo" as if we never saw her get behind them.

Fail #2 Saying "Cheese"