Friday, August 20, 2010

I didn't know you were planning on adopting again

That's what most people said to us when we shared our news. And well...we didn't really know either. It just kind of evolved. We had talked about if we would ever adopt again, and we never ruled  it out, but we never thought it would be this soon either. I was obsessesed,  I would check Reeces Rainbow almost daily while Gary was deployed. I loved to pray for the children and see who got families. I would read the blogs of those adopting RR children and slowwly I started envisioning myself in their shoes. Occasionaly I would send Gary a picture of a little girl that I thought "maybe" we "might" be somewhat interested in adopting. I even emailed RR about 2 of them. For no reason what so ever that's as far as it went.
When Gary got back from his deployment, the nudge to add to our family got stronger. The really odd thing is he was the one to bring it up. He even said he really wanted to add a younger child to the family. Our children are 6.5, 8.5. and 9.5
I had seen Ella's picture on RR and had offhandedly showed it to Gary once. But we really thought what would be ideal would be a 4-5 year old. Right before our family trip to Ohio RR posted a new picture of Ella, she had just turned 2. I showed the picture to Gary, and immediatley his face lit up. Over the next several weeks Andrea with RR tried to get us more information, like does she walk, does she talk, at that point all they knew was that she had CP. Gary and I would talk about it a little, then avoid the subject. He was under the impression that it would cost as much as our Russian adoption. I told him, that it was ONLY half, and that I had crunched the numbers and we could do it, by doing the same thing we did with Anastasia, take on the debt and pay it off as we could.
So finally, one day I asked him. We need to decided if we are intersted in adopting her, so we can stop torturing ourselves. He said, "i think we both already know the answer" YEAH!!!!

ONE of the huge God things in this: I could never understand why noone had committed to her yet, she was young and cute, and her disabilites seemed mild, she is sitting straight up and using both hands. Several people have told me that they inquired about her with RR, but for some reason they just knew it was not their daughter. One of these women is adopting the one of the 2 little girls we had inquired about.

ANOTHER huge God thing is: we thought we needed more information, it seems crazy to just committ to a child off of 2 pictures and 1 sentence. Over those weeks, everytime I looked at her picture, something happened that only an adoptive mother can explain. In that picture I saw my chosen chld. Not the child we chose but the child God chose for our family. I told Gary, "I know she is ours, when I look at her picture I can feel her in arms" Several days after we committed to her, I got an email from Andrea saying she had gotten more information. The information basically said: she follows directions, talks, seems normal cognitively, can walk holding onto someone's hands.
The funny thing is, it was nice to have that information, but God didn't make it available to us until we let Him lead us blind, to commit to a child that He lead us too. It was like him saying, "see my good and faithful servant, I could have given you this information, but why?"

To say we feel blessed to be adopting again is such an understatement.

6 comments:

  1. Hi--just noticed your comment on my blog and I thought I'd check out yours. Ella is so beautiful. I'm so excited for you! On the book...I can make you one just like the one I made Anna. You'd just send me the picture files and names of people, etc. Then I'll send you the jpeg images and you can print them however you want. Let me know if you're interested. Have a great adoption journey!

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  2. Congrats on your adoption. We adopted 3 babies from the Ukraine last Jan. We loved every bit of it that we also would love to it again. Just waiting for God to show us what child to bring home. We now have 10 kids. We will follow your journey as you bring home your sweet baby, again congrats!!

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  3. Thinking of you, Cara. You and Gary are making an amazing contribution to the world. We are so proud of you.
    Love,
    Jan

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  4. So excited for you! She is absolutely beautiful!! God is truly amazing and His timing and plan is always perfect! It's so wonderful to see how he changes and moves the hearts of his people for what He's called each of us to do. I remember when we committed to adopt Mina just the way God moved our hearts and worked everything out! Can't wait to see you bring Ella home!

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  5. I loved reading this and seeing how God is working. I can't wait for your baby girl to come home!

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  6. Hi! My name is Nance Fritz and I was at your daughters orphanage this summer. I have a photo of her and will send it to you if you would like. My email knucklemoe@comcast.net

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