miracles

What a difference a week makes! Our days have been filled with more paperwork, a few fun purchases (I couldn’t resist a couple of things at Old Navy for our sweet peanut), and moments of absolute excitement followed by sheer terror. I can’t believe we have our little girl! Her picture is on our fridge, in my purse, in our bedroom. She is already deep in our hearts and well on her way to being right here in our home. Can you believe it?

It seems like everyday brings new thoughts about what the next steps on this journey will be like. She speaks Chinese. She eats with chopsticks. She has never seen a car seat. She doesn’t like cheerios and mac ‘n cheese, probably completely grossed out by a hotdog. She will be scared out of her mind when she is handed to us. What will her grief look like? Will she scream for 3 hours, will she refuse us to touch her, will she simply shut down, will she demand to be held for hours at a time, will she shun one of us and cling to the other? We expect her transition to be hard. We often think about what life would be like for our Micah if a stranger came and dropped him in the middle of China. He would be terrified, and Lydia will be too – they are virtually the same age. We are thrilled to bring her home and at the same time find ourselves preparing for a few difficult weeks and months. But even in the midst of those moments of “What in the world are we doing!?!?” we know that God has brought us this little girl to be ours, to love as our very own daughter, to be our little sister and we can’t wait! We are praying we can go get her on the soon end of things, which would be sometime in July or August.

We are also praying for God’s provision for the remainder of the finances. Lots of people have asked about this and at the risk of being a little too forthcoming, I will just lay it out there for you to specifically pray with us. We have paid almost $10,000 of our money thus far. We have received approximately $5000 in grants and we have another $10,000 to pay. Should we need to we have a home equity line to draw on, but we are hoping that we might be eligible for a few more grants to defray the cost a bit. We know God will provide for the remainder of the funds, whether that is through our ability to pay off a loan, or through additional grants. A huge variable is airfare. Should we find ourselves flying around the time of the Olympics, airfare could be several thousand dollars more than normal. And since Lydia will be two, we will need to purchase a ticket for her, something that we did not initially plan for. It’s a lot but we know God is aware of the bill! And He will provide in the way that is best for our family.

God has done a miracle to bring us Lydia. He led us to special needs which wasn’t even on our radar screen 4 months ago, sent our agency a random little girl (as opposed to the ‘batches’ that they normally get), bumped us ahead of 11 other families, and blessed us with Lydia who from all accounts is a healthy girl who needs a few double cheeseburgers in her diet. That is a miracle. There is no other explanation. I have never felt burdened to pray for a specific miracle until this journey, and God has not disappointed. He has truly given us more than we could have asked for or imagined. Lydia will always embody the miraculous; we can’t wait to see what’s around the corner.

Thank you so much for praying with us! It is so fun to say…we can’t WAIT for you to meet her… SOON!

Blessings,
Eric and Ashleigh