The Journey Continues

This adoption journey is nothing short of crazy. Like crazy in the sense that some days you think to yourself, "are we really going to do this?"

And not because it is crazy to think about adding another child to our home. Because we have done that. We added two at once a few years back. Two foster kids that spent a summer with us. Adding them to the mix was not the crazy part. It was all the drama that came with them. The damaged family. The endless social workers, counselors, people coming into our lives. (oh yeah, and the baggage that they brought with them, but that is another post altogether:) We loved them deeply. They imprinted on our lives forever.

This is no different. We have had the privilege of getting to know our birth mom this time. With our last situation, the birth mom hardly grunted to me on the phone. It was painful. This time, it is so much different. She emails me every day. Without fail. She takes a bus to the library to use the computer and everyday around 11am my time, we send countless emails back and forth. She has shared her heart with me. It has been beautiful and painful all at once. Sometimes she is brutally honest about what she is feeling. That can be hard. But I am so grateful. I am so grateful for this time that I can get to know her. I think it will be a beautiful gift that I can give our son. To tell him things about his birth mom. That we got along great. That she is a delightful woman who loved him so much she chose to give him up. I cannot imagine what she must be feeling, but I know that I am so proud of her.

Tomorrow, she gets on a plane and comes here to give birth in just a few weeks. I have had the privilege of getting together some things to furnish her apartment here. Our Bible Study families have graciously helped us to do this. Sure, we could have just had the agency do this. But, I have to say that it has been an honor to prepare for her arrival. Some small token that we can give to her to make her stay more comfortable. Tomorrow we get to go put all of these items into her apartment and then we go to the airport and greet her with open arms. I can't wait.

Trust me, there are still unknowns. She still may decide to parent. There is fear that we have gotten too attached to her, to the baby. There is fear that we will lose more money in this whole thing. Just being honest...we have scrimped and saved to build our adoption fund. This has been a lean year for us financially, it is a reality and one that we can't help but think about.

But what keeps coming back to me is this: God chose us to get to know Kristi. We were presented to at least 15-20 birth moms through this process. Finally, we got the call. She chose us......God chose us to parent this little boy. We are so grateful and we look forward to these next weeks and this next step in our adoption journey. Please pray with us that we will continue to show love to our birth mom and for peace for all involved leading up to the birth of our sweet Titus.