The Journey

Six months until we see our kids... maybe more.  

It isn't that long, considering we skipped the first half of our wait time by a fast referral; but it is a lifetime once you have seen your children's faces. 

Faces grow.

I am going to watch my adopted babies get bigger with every update.  They will grow up in giant leaps. 

Without me. 

I am already missing so many moments.

Baby Boy is only three months old. 
I will miss late night feedings, milk-breath...the good stuff. 

Baby Girl is seven months old. 
If they come home in six more months,
will I miss all that plus her first steps?   

Her first birthday?

I realize that this is one of the things that makes people uneasy about adoption.  But to me, these missed moments symbolize something bigger.  They show me that God placed me in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to meet my children, in the exact moment that God chose me to become their "Mommy".

I have to think of the words of  Katie Davis,

speaking of one of her 13 Ugandan daughters:

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"I want her to be a baby so I can strap her on me and hold her there and she will feel secure and safe and protected. I want to be the person who taught her to write her name and how much fun it is to make mud pies, and I want to be the person who laughed with her when she lost her first tooth. I want to know where the scars came from that she can’t remember the stories about, and I want to be the person who wiped her tears when she fell.

But I know that is not how God intended it.

He did not choose me for those moments, He chose me for these. " 

- Katie Davis, "The Journey"

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Praise God for choosing me for these "moments";

to be the one in waiting for them. 

Because I am. 

In a world where few people
know my babies' names,

and no one can tell me 
when their real birthdays are... 

I get to be the one
to count the hairs on their heads
in a grainy referral picture. 

I get to be the one to wait,
and it is one of my greatest honors. 

I would like to say that we chose these children, and we did (in a way);

but truly, God chose us FOR these children. 

Any look at an adoption agency waitlist will tell you that.

What did we choose? 

We chose to open the door to first one baby, then maybe a toddler, then an older child, then a big sister, then a sibling.  We knew that He would bring us the children that He had intended for us, so we didn't worry too much about the birth order or family dynamic. 
We knew He already had it figured out.

And He did. 

He chose us.

He chose us to bake birthday cakes every other night, just because we just can't think of enough ways to celebrate our newest children.

He chose us to frame their pictures all over the house, so that Mommy could stop carrying the pictures from room to room.

He chose us to hold them, when it's time;

and not one minute before.

So when we hit the inevitable adoption speedbump, or celebrate Christmas while half of our children are on the other side of the world, or we blow out candles for first Daisy, then Lilly, I will remember that God chose me for these  "waiting moments", and the ones to come.